


A Bushel and a Peck

by raven_aorla



Series: Made to Measure [7]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Gotham (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Humor, Clones, Disturbing Themes, Drama, Ed and Reid are Second Cousins, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existential Crisis, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Mental Health Issues, Non-Graphic Queer Sex, Non-Graphic Violence, PTSD, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Platonic Cuddling, Recovery, References to Torture, Self-Acceptance, Self-Harm, Spencer Reid as Gotham Rogue, Spencer Reid as Unsub, Stealth Crossover, Touch-Starved, Two Jonathans, Unethical Experimentation, Unethical Medicine, past dubious consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 03:47:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 46,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12225120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_aorla/pseuds/raven_aorla
Summary: “Short version: Hugo Strange cloned one of us after we got the overdose so he could have a version to play with. I don’t know which. I only found out, like, three weeks ago. Thankfully I don’t start med school for another two months. My friends and I found that Arkham warden you got fobbed off on, then the gang he sold you to, and now we’ve got you, okay? Jonathan Crane is not going to get screwed over again on our watch.”[Can be read alone. Knowledge of CM fandom optional.]





	1. One for the Blackbird

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone new: my characterization of Jonathan Crane developed before it was announced that Crane was returning to the show, and he appeared in several fics before s4 began. I plan on continuing writing mine because it's a total AU in many other respects anyway, he's a character there have been myriad takes on for many years, and I am very attached to him. I am impressed with s4 Crane, though, and feel incredibly bad for him. So this happened.
> 
> ****
> 
>  _One for the blackbird, one for the crow, and that leaves just two to grow._  
>  Folk saying about sowing grain, which may be measured in units known as bushels (also a kind of container) and pecks.
> 
>  _Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house._ Matthew 5:15, King James Version
> 
>  _I love you a bushel and a peck._  
>  Song from the musical _Guys and Dolls_
> 
> Definitions of the word "peck" from en.oxforddictionaries.com include: _unit of measure for grain, quick kiss, strike with a bird's beak, and an archaic mass noun synonymous with "a large number or amount of something"._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs used in this chapter, both by the Decemberists:
> 
>  
> 
> [The Crane Wife 1 & 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3cp8LERM70)
> 
>  
> 
> [After the Bombs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB5PbJ8WylI)

If Crane has been very good lately - high production, no talking back - they let him listen to music while he works. Music he prefers, even. 

_And I was greedy, and vain, and forced her to weaving on cold looms, in closed rooms._

He hasn’t been bad for a while, but he has to tell them that no, Dad’s formula was liquid, and he doesn’t know how to turn it to an aerosol form. He didn’t even get to finish high school. How do they expect him to do this? What kind of impossible misunderstanding of scientific development are they working with, when it’s a miracle he’s been able to modify the original so much and so quickly as is?

 _Sound the keening bell, see it’s painted red, soft as fontanel, the feathers in the thread…_ the music continues, but he can’t hear the rest of it, because it’s the closet again. With the scarecrow in it. No. NO!

This time, though, when the door opens, it’s not one of the gangsters.

It’s a plague doctor, like the medieval beaky mask, in jeans and a modern peacoat. He takes off the mask. He has exactly the same face as his if Crane were more confident, somewhat less scrawny, and significantly better kempt.

“Say fuck you to that thing over there and come with me,” he says, reaching out a hand to the cowering mess on the floor. “I’m Jonathan Crane, too. Or Sick Crow.”

The scarecrow against the wall crumbles.

****

Sick Crow (Crane can’t think of him as another version of himself until he’s heard an explanation) puts his mask on once Crane’s touched him and confirmed he’s real. “Some of my friends are staying here to ambush the gang when they come back. Do you want us to save any for you?”

“To do what?” He follows Sick Crow out of the house, into the yard. Wherever they’re going can’t be worse.

“I dunno, revenge. Do you do revenge? This would be an interesting case study for the nature vs. nurture debate, diverging at age fifteen and all. I’m not super into revenge myself but I want to provide you with options.”

Crane stumbles and nearly falls, then almost panics when someone dressed in all black except for a navy blue bandana over his face grabs him. But the guy just rights him again and lightly squeezes his shoulder. “Don’t overwhelm him, Jonathan. You and Harley get him out of here. Bridget, Ivy, and I can take care of the rest.”

After a moment’s thought and more trailing after Sick Crow, Crane says, “You can show me pictures of the revenge?”

“We can do that, sweetheart,” says Black and Blue. “I’m not normally big into slow deaths, myself, but I’m a bit of a sap and I’m good with knives.”

There’s a car, and there’s a girl in the car with a massive first-aid kit. “Oh my god, are you hurt? Other than being _malnourished_?”

“I’m okay,” Crane says. 

“Get in the backseat where it’ll be harder for you to be seen,” Sick Crow says. “Duck if we say so.”

“Can you sit with me?” Crane asks the girl.

“Of course. My name’s Harley. Get in, fasten your seatbelt.”

Sick Crow takes his mask off and sticks it in a compartment under the passenger seat. He replaces it with a pair of glasses. Crane doesn’t like looking at his face right now, but Harley seems nice. “If you’re used to calling him ‘Jonathan’, you can call me ‘Crane’. I’ve mostly been called that since Dad...you know. If you know. Do you know?”

“I know,” the other says, starting the car. “Short version: Hugo Strange cloned one of us after we got the overdose so he could have a version to play with. I don’t know which. I only found out, like, three weeks ago. Thankfully I don’t start med school for another two months. My friends and I found that Arkham warden you got fobbed off on, then the gang he sold you to, and now we’ve got you, okay? Jonathan Crane is not going to get screwed over again on our watch.”

Harley looks at Crane like he’s a three-legged kitten. “Would you like a hug?”

“Nobody’s hugged me since Dad, but I think, maybe, yeah.” The hug squeezes the air out of his lungs, but in a nice way. “Do you have a blanket? I’ve gotten cold easily since they thawed me out of cryo.”

“Thistle said that Strange put some of you on ice during an evacuation, hoping to come back later despite orders,” Harley says, rubbing his back.

“Yes. We got found when the new special staff cleared out the place. A lot of the….stranger...ones got terminated, but I was normal-ish so they put me in a regular Arkham cell, said they’d lobotomize me if I talked about it.” He’s forgotten how long hugs are supposed to go for.

“Later you got sold into slavery,” Sick Crow says calmly, though he’s gripping the steering wheel awfully tight.

“I suppose you could put it that way.”

With a sigh, Harley de-hugs him. “More Q&A later. Blanket. When did you last eat? I have a thermos full of hot chocolate and a protein bar.”

“I love hot chocolate,” Crane says. “I got some last time they said it was Christmas.”

Harley wraps him in a blanket. “Wanna listen to some music? Jonathan can put some on. It’s a bit of a drive.”

Jonathan adjusts the rear view mirror with precise movements. “I sold our childhood home. Killed Grandma and live in her house now.”

Crane can’t remember the last time he’s laughed before now. It’s a sort of dry croak-giggle. “I hated her.”

“It was an accident, but yeah, didn’t cry over it. I can play _The Crane Wife_.”

“How’d you know? Wait, stupid question I guess.” 

Harley drapes the blanket over him and hands him the thermos. It’s still hot. He sips and watches the night pass outside, listening in silence. He almost laughs again, more hysterically, a few tracks in:

_It was a white crane, it was a helpless thing upon a red stain, with an arrow in its wing. It called and cried, and called and cried so. And all the stars were crashing round as I laid eyes on what I’d found._

“Do you have a good life, Jonathan?” Crane asks when he’s nearly done with the hot chocolate.

“I have permanent brain damage, have to take a lot of medication and do therapy, and people think I’m creepy and they’re right, but it isn’t bad,” Jonathan says.

“I’m glad to know it’s possible.” Then Crane blinks and shakes the thermos as if to reveal its secrets. “Did you drug me?”

“No!” his rescuers protest. 

“I just feel, like, warm inside, like really inside inside, and solid, and still.” If they know about the album, and what he likes to drink, and how much he hated Grandma, they’re not lying. He doesn’t want to look at Jonathan’s face much right now, but at least he believes he means him no harm.

Harley takes the thermos from him. “That’s called feeling safe.”

****

Jonathan lets Harley take over the caring and feeding of Crane. Even if Crane has thankfully decided to trust them, both J.C’s are slightly freaked out by each other. Harley gets a late dinner into Crane, presents him with a change of clothes, and probably tucks him into bed with a lullaby. She’s empathetic and gentle towards people she takes under her wing in ways Jonathan can’t be.

While that’s all happening, Jonathan calls Nygma to make a report. Nygma pledges assistance with cleanup and tells him to “take care of yourselves.” Haha. He subsequently eats some random leftovers and tries to read a book while lying on the living room couch.

At 2:40 in the morning, he jerks awake when a key turns in the lock and the front door opens. He took his glasses off earlier due to not needing them for reading, but he has no trouble recognizing the person. Nefyn locks the door behind him before he removes his bandana. “Victor can spare me for another day or two.”

“Get over here,” Jonathan says imperiously.

Nefyn undoes his utility belt and places it neatly on the table in the foyer. “Apparently there’s two we haven’t nabbed yet and they seem to have figured it out and fled. Should keep their victim under wraps until we’ve got ‘em.’”

“Talk about it later. Get mostly naked and get over here.” Jonathan chucks the cushions off the couch to make it wider. He doesn’t want to go upstairs where Crane might hear them.

Turquoise boxers and a black t-shirt aren’t really that naked. Jonathan slips his hands underneath Nefyn’s shirt when he gets close enough, runs fingers over his rather pleasing abdominal definition. Nefyn drapes himself over Jonathan and leans down to kiss him. “I took lots of vengeance pictures to show the poor guy. How much younger is he than you, aging-wise?”

“Two years. He’s agreed to be called ‘Crane’.” With Nefyn’s limber assistance, Jonathan carefully rolls them so he’s on top. “I’m not sure what to do with him now we’ve got him.”

“Feed him and talk to him in the morning, see what he wants. I don’t think he’s gotten much of that.” Nefyn places a hand on the small of Jonathan’s back and traces the waistband of his sweatpants with the other. “Are you planning to do something with me? Because I could go for a microwave burrito.”

“I only have microwave tamales.”

“You foul fiend. Unhand me this instant.”

Jonathan scoffs. “I have by this point learned how to effectively blow you without any hands. Which do you want first? You can’t have both at once. It’s disrespectful.”

Nefyn sits up, grinning. “Nygma know this how you barter for assassin services? He might get Penguin to start giving you a bigger cut, one of his pets being so broke.”

Jonathan just gets on his knees on the rug and looks up expectantly.

Nefyn sits properly on the couch. “Are you doing this because you’re hot for me being all badass, or is this because you’re unsettled by seeing what might have been?”

“Yes,” Jonathan says quietly, undoing Nefyn’s buttons with steady fingers.

****

Crane wakes at 4:17 AM needing to use the bathroom. He’s pleased to remember that he can just get up to use it. Harley insisted on sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor no matter what he said. Maybe she thinks he’ll run off. He steps quietly around her.

The bathroom is very clean. The hand soap looks like a pink brain and smells like...like fresh fruit of some kind, probably, a berry or something. It’s been awhile. When exiting the bathroom he hears noises from downstairs. He’s worried that maybe someone from the gang has found him, so he tiptoes towards the noises. Just to look, not to engage. 

He can see from partway down the stairs that it’s actually his clone straddling a guy on the floor, having rather bitey sex. The guy on the bottom is naked. Jonathan’s got a Gotham U. shirt on and nothing else. Huh, so he/they really does/do like boys as well as girls. For real. He’s been wondering about himself for years. 

“If you use your usual line you do with voyeurs, I’m finishing on my own,” Jonathan says, going still, kissing his partner’s forehead with tender but firm authority.

“I am not propositioning a recently liberated abuse survivor,” the other guy protests. “Please don’t stop, please, please.”

“Shh, cygnet.” (Baby swan?) Jonathan doesn’t turn his head. “Unless you need something, Crane, go back to bed. Nefyn was the one you met but didn’t see his face. He’s an assassin and won’t let anything happen. Everything’s fine.” 

Crane decides he is due for a shower _anyway_ , so there is no harm in multitasking.

****

Jonathan comes downstairs at 10:28 in the morning to find Harley eating cereal at the dining table and flipping through a large binder. She looks up. “Morning. Pretty much as soon as we started planning, Thistle made a briefing packet about what's what in Gotham these days. She thought we could use it to help Crane. Maybe we could have both her and Bridgit talk to him about their shared Indian Hill experiences? If they want? Anyway, it occurred to me to take out things that would needlessly upset him right now.”

One of the plastic sleeves she’s removed contains newspaper clippings about once-Jerome, now-Joker. “Good call. A few monsters at a time.”

She raises her homemade aloe juice (ew) to that. “Joker is fascinating but not reassuring. I take it your boy’s still asleep. Our guest is.”

Then they hear a terrible shriek. “You had to jinx it,” Jonathan mutters, running upstairs with her hot on his heels.

Crane is curled in a tight ball on the bed, begging empty air to leave him alone. Harley puts a hand between his shoulderblades. “It’s just Harley and your other half, Crane. You’re okay. Nothing’s here but the three of us.”

“It’s here, it’s here, it’s always here,” Crane sobs, but without trying to throw her off.

Jonathan crouches down by the bed. “You’re right. It _is_ here. All the time, whether or not there’s a physical one to summon it. Every moment and every day forever and ever. That’s how it’s always going to have to be. But it’s not the only thing that’s here. It will never be the _only_ thing ever again.”

Crane shakes his head and makes as if to gnaw on his own arm as a distraction. Harley puts a hand on it to dissuade him. Not prevent him. He’s had enough of being restrained and coerced over the years. 

“What are the words to ‘After the Bombs’?” Jonathan asks.

“Huh?”

“It’s from your favorite album. I know you know. Tell me. You gotta breathe slow, though, otherwise I won’t understand you.”

Discovering that he’s approved to hug the pillow, Crane does that instead. “And after the bombs subside...and, and this long low champagne - I mean campaign - calls it good for the...for the night, we meet in the streets...uh, we grip at our hands, we hold a little tight, after the bombs subside...I don’t remember the next verse?”

“It’s okay. What’s the next part you remember? Do you think you could sing it, not just say it?”

“Okay. _We pinch at our skin while we wonder how we escaped harm…_ ” He starts shaking. Harley grabs a hairbrush and starts brushing tangles out, a form of touch he leans into, closing his eyes. “ _After the rockets calm, then we’ll go dancing, yes we’ll go dancing, till it all starts over again._ ”

“Yes.” Jonathan stays crouching in order not to loom over him. “Did seeing me and Nefyn last night upset you? Nefyn gave me a talking to about it, after, when he had time to think properly.”

Harley raises an eyebrow. “Were you two, you know, in the living room?”

“Ironically, we were trying not to disturb him with the noise,” Jonathan says.

Crane traces slow patterns on the rumpled covers with his fingertips. “It was nice seeing me be able to do that. I’m not sure if I could.”

“You haven’t had much of a chance of a genuine late adolescence,” Jonathan said.

“Well, yeah, and also because, like, it was kinda weirdly hot, but when I...when I imagined it was me, like me me, not you me, it just made me think about other stuff.”

If their lives had a soundtrack other than what they created for themselves, Jonathan imagines there would have been a record scratch. “Could you elaborate?”

Crane’s blue eyes are melancholy but guileless. “Being very good, very very very good, that only got me avoidance of punishment. So, like, if I wanted a reward instead, I made deals.”

Jonathan is glad of his unusual levels of calm by default. “With the warden?”

“Also this one orderly. They were in cahoots with each other. I’d do it to get stuff. Art supplies, books, softer sheets, extra food I really missed. One time I let the warden do extra and he lent me an iPod for a few weeks. Like that. I think, despite everything else they did, they drew the line at outright making me do it. Like if I got something in exchange that made it justifiable in their minds.” Crane rubs his face against the pillow under his head. Grounding. Maybe stimming. “I’m hungry.”

“You do know that was reprehensible of them, and that you are not to blame for doing what you could to improve your terrible situation, right?” Jonathan says, barely audible over the roar of his own pulse. He hasn’t been this angry in years. He thinks Harley might know him and psychology well enough to notice. He doubts Crane can tell.

“Yes. Can we move on for now?”

Harley is clearly forcing herself to sound light. “You got it, buddy. You want an omelette? I think you could do with more protein in your diet. My girlfriend grew really great bell peppers I can put in.” Ivy loves spoiling Harley with custom vegetables and mushrooms. It’s the only way to combat Harley’s sweet tooth. 

“Okay, thanks. Do you need help?”

“I’m fine. Get your breathing back under control. Talk to this guy. Um, FYI, both of us just got our B.A’s in Psychology, though Jonathan had to overachieve and get one in Biochemistry as well. It’s not fully being qualified as a therapist or anything, but we aren’t clueless.”

“I’ve never had therapy,” Crane says offhand. “I mean, not the talk kind. Can I go outside today? You have a big yard. Are the woods still there? Where I - we - tried to catch a chipmunk but failed miserably?”

Nygma and Reid, codename the Reader, helped research the warden. Selina, Thistle, and Nefyn helped abduct the warden. After Ivy questioned him - though not about that particular atrocity - Jonathan gave him enough of a fear gas overdose to have a heart attack after about two hours. Jonathan filmed it and recorded useful scientific data while he was at it. Now Jonathan wishes he made him suffer for fifteen minutes, then given him the antidote, then injected him again when he thought he was done. Alternating. For days. While filming it and taking further notes. 

There’s still that orderly and those two gangsters. Cobblepot put feelers out through his and his husband’s empire to find the hideout. He would probably be willing to continue.

For now, Jonathan says, “The woods are still there. I’ll show you after we eat. I’ve got a pair of Converse with one tiny hole you can borrow for now. You have a pair of holes with a tiny bit of shoe.”

Crane croak-giggles. “Hey, why do you dress as a plague doctor?”

“I used to only dress as Scarecrow for that sort of thing, externalizing it in an empowering way, then I realized there are too many people who know about what happened to us. They might figure it out if the news caught sight of me. I only use the scarecrow costume when I’m doing stuff in private. Sick Crow is for when I’m out and about. Someone’s having me make fear-based weapons, too, and I have to do field tests on occasion. Don’t worry, I get paid.” He needs to feel out Crane’s attitude towards murder before giving more details. The current iteration comes in both intravenous and aerosolized form, is non-fatal in normal doses, and doesn’t affect Jonathan at all due to his body’s defensive mutation. It’s simply taken dozens of trials on rats and seventeen trials on humans to achieve. Thankfully, he doesn’t need to kill his test subjects anymore. It had become a logistical nightmare.

“I’m glad you weren’t dressed as a scarecrow when you came to get me,” Crane says, sitting up. It would be interesting to examine what Crane had come up with under duress. Ivy had promised to grab some samples from the house before Bridgit burned it down.

Jonathan stands and offers his hand yet again. “I figured that’d be inadvisable on multiple levels. C’mon, downstairs awaits.”

“What _does_ Nefyn say to voyeurs?” Crane asks along the way, walking carefully in his besocked feet.

This startles a laugh out of Jonathan. Not so cracked, but less emotive. “If they weren’t invited to watch, he either says, ‘Go fuck yourself, we’re busy with each other,’ or ‘Come join us or get out.’”

“It must be nice having a boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend. I’m aromantic and wary of emotional intimacy and, like, not quite right, and he has other partners too, and sometimes I hook up with people just the once for variety. But we are important to each other, yes, and I would be willing to say I do rather love him.” Harley once said this explanation had started to sound like an artificially diffident and scripted spiel. In response, Jonathan resorted to ‘so’s your face’. 

Crane cocks his head. “Riiiiight. What’s Harley?”

“My best friend. She approached me in my new high school and I couldn’t shake her off. That’s partly why I’m starting with them when it comes to you meeting the people who helped find you. Six people other than we three. They’re gonna work with us to eliminate threats and help you go from here, get on with your life. Like, you know, however.” Jonathan glances over to see how Crane feels about this.

“That’s a lot,” Crane says, tucking himself further into Jonathan’s coziest, most worn-in yukata. Not a kimono. People keep calling these casual robes kimonos. Which is wrong. Huh, Crane can’t have seen any of _Attack on Titan_ ; maybe he’d like watching it as a downtime activity. Or maybe that’d be overstimulating. Jonathan will check with Harley.

Right, this was anxiety, his occasional visitor on his current meds. Which he needs to take right the hell now. His whole plan focused on the easy part, the part where his clone ends up in his house and not acutely suffering in the present. Now there's chronic suffering from the past and doubt about the future, and, and...

Time to break the loop. Jonathan isn’t generally a fan of touch unless it’s part of foreplay, sex, and afterglow/aftercare, but he pauses on the staircase and puts two tentative fingers on Crane’s upper arm. To both of them, he says, “Not all at once, promise.”


	2. One for the Crow

“Deep breath in. Hold it.”

Crane does. Trying not to think about being dunked under freezing water.

“Okay, let it out.”

“Your stethoscope is warm,” he tells the surprisingly nice mob doctor who’s come by the house.

Jonathan is sitting in the far corner of the guest bedroom, crocheting. Not knitting, he was insistent about that earlier. Crane wants a chaperone while a doctor was poking at him, and it’s less embarrassing in the presence of someone whose body was close to the same. “She’s protective of her soldiers. No matter what they’re fighting.”

Dr. Kali moves from behind Crane to in front of him. She looks South Asian, maybe late thirties in age with a bit of softness to her frame, wearing a burnt orange polo with jeans. Her long braid is coiled into a bun. “I’ve worked with prisoners of war, back when I was a combat medic and the Army needed someone to take care of them right away before we could get them home. I know little details can help. Another deep breath and hold. Count of five Mississippi, then you can breathe again.”

Crane is grateful that they didn’t insist on him going to her actual medical suite. Nefyn said the location of “Casa del Zsasz” is need-to-know, anyway. He and Harley are running some errands, such as buying groceries and picking up basic clothes that won’t be baggy on Crane. Nefyn is red-green colorblind and not allowed to pick out clothes (other than neutral or blue) unsupervised. 

“Breathe. Now you can put your shirt back on. I’m taking your blood pressure, k? It’s going to feel a bit constrictive, but if it starts upsetting you, reminding you of anything else, absolutely tell me and I’ll undo it.”

“Okay.” Crane meekly goes along with the rest of the checkup. 

At the end of the regular tests, Kali glances at Jonathan in the corner. “What are you making?”

“Voodoo doll,” he says, deadpan. 

She turns back to Crane. “I’m going to ask you questions more personal than the ones so far. Do you want him to stay there?”

“Yes. What are the questions?”

Sitting beside him on the bed, as if to make them more equal, she asks, “Have you had any form of sexual contact, and if so, have you had any form of STD screening since that time?”

Crane wraps his robe closer around himself. It really is his now. Jonathan said he can keep it. “Yes, and no.”

“To your knowledge, did your partners have other partners?”

“No idea.”

“I think you should be screened.”

He gulps. “Okay.”

“I brought two sample cups and a pamphlet explaining how to give a clean urine sample. One of them is a backup in case you get it wrong the first time.”

There’s a lot of light coming from the bathroom window. Crane resists the temptation to curl up on the plush rug in a patch of sun. On his way back, he hears Jonathan not yelling but definitely raising his voice. 

“What am I supposed to do with this, Kali? What good does it do any of us if hearing the truth makes me want to burn Arkham down, when that’d get me in a lot of trouble and ruin my career plans?" 

Crane knocks on the doorframe before entering. Jonathan’s hands are fisted in his own hair. The doubles’ eyes meet.

“You were going to take me on a walk,” Crane says in his most appeasing tone. He doesn’t like seeing the other guy angry. “I mean, if the doctor’s done with me.”

She puts the bagged sample container in an opaque tote. “There’s nothing obvious wrong with you, Crane, not physically, other than being significantly underweight and in need of more exercise. I’ll send along a tentative plan, okay? Nothing drastic. In the meantime, go with what feels good but avoid overlarge portions. Jonathan’s had some experience with medically supervised weight gain and can advise you for today. Similarly, a leisurely walk, no more than an hour, is an excellent start for you.”

“Thank you, doctor.” He stands closer than is probably polite, vacillating.

“Do you want a hug?” When he stands still, seconds ticking by, she hug him. “I was told you wouldn’t be interested in regular psych treatment, which I think you need but should only enter into willingly. I have experience in PTSD counseling.”

“Good to know, thanks.” She smells sort of antiseptic, not like Mom, but Crane closes his eyes and pretends.

****

Jonathan coaxes Crane out of the robe and into a long-sleeved flannel shirt over his tee he can easily remove. He also gives him a hair tie. “Oh, an old pair of sunglasses, here.”

“You don’t need them?” Crane asks, checking himself in the entryway mirror.

“My current glasses have transition lenses. Actually…try my glasses on.”

A moment later, Crane says, “Nope, not doing it for me.”

“Interesting.”

Crane is quiet as they walk, and slow. When they pass by the barn, Crane asks, “Is that where the alpacas stayed in winter?” He waves at the structure in question.

“Mm hm. I make drugs in there now.” Jonathan doesn’t want to lie to Crane if he can help it. 

“Oh. Nice that you have a whole separate building. Only for fear?”

“No, I’ve developed an anti-anxiety sort of pill too. Street product, not been made illegal so far. Pretty mild. Good moneymaker.”

Crane nods thoughtfully. They walk in more silence until a crow swoops down, at which point he shrieks and tries to hide behind Jonathan. 

Jonathan extracts some cheesy biscuit crumbs he wrapped in a paper napkin when Nefyn took him to Red Lobster (a guilty pleasure gourmand Nygma finds appalling) a few days ago as a break. He undoes the napkin and holds out his palm, though he keeps the napkin as slight protection for his hand. “Hey, Satsuki, it’s me you want. Sorry I haven’t been keeping up with appointments.”

Satsuki goes _crrr_ and perches on Jonathan’s upper arm to peck at the offering.

“You do this often?” Crane asks, carefully getting back up but staying two paces away.

“Yeah. They probably think they’re getting double. Crows recognize human faces but are shaky with Occam’s Razor.” Jonathan checks the sky to see if there are others coming. Doesn’t look like it. He doesn’t usually see them in the afternoon. 

“I’ve either not learned or forgotten what Occam’s Razor is.”

Jonathan stares at the ground for a moment. What nice green grass. As a kid, Nefyn used to get in trouble for not keeping the front lawn in good shape despite him physically not being able to tell what a healthy lawn looks like. Talking to Crane is like talking about Nefyn’s childhood, but worse. Jonathan focuses on the question. “Occam’s Razor is a philosophy thing. The most likely explanation is probably the truth. Which, in Gotham particularly? No.”

Crane snorts. “Especially not to us. Why do you feed crows all the time? You don’t seem like a...a Goth Disney princess.”

“Excuse you, I am the epitome of a Goth Disney princess.” Satsuki preens his hair, so he runs his fingers through their feathers in a vaguely similar motion. “Seriously though, it’s rebellion against our common hate-fear-fixation-enemy-alter-ego thing.”

“Ah. That makes a lot of sense actually.” Crane stands his ground this time when the crow caws at him. 

“Okay, okay, that’s enough, I have things that need doing.” Jonathan nudges Satsuki off him. 

They head for the stream. Crane keeps looking around everywhere and touching tree trunks. Proving to himself that things are real. “You’re being really nice to me,” he mumbles when the stream is in sight.

“I’m surprised too. I’m a selfish bastard for the most part.” Jonathan says this without any sarcasm or even much inflection. It’s the simple truth.

Crane glances at him, then looks away again, towards the water. “You love Nefyn and Harley.”

“I do. And Nygma, but don’t tell him I outright told you so. He’ll get soppy.”

“The briefing packet mentioned him. The Riddler. One of the Gotham Kings of Crime.” Crane reaches the edge of the stream and crouches down, bending over the water. “Hey, there’s tadpoles.”

“It happens,” Jonathan says. He takes a seat on a nearby log, watching his charge watching small wildlife. Crane seems peaceful in this particular moment. 

“It didn’t say how you know him.” Crane says at length, feeling smooth stones and dipping his fingers into the water. Childlike fragility, but wonder, too. 

Jonathan picks up a pebble and feels the texture. It does nothing for him, as expected. Whoop de do. He puts it back down. “It says he used to work in Forensics for the GCPD, right? He came to the hospital to check up on me after I woke up. Gave me his number in case I needed something. He wasn’t known to be a criminal then, but in fact he just hadn’t been caught yet. Later, after he got out, I called him to help me cover up what happened after I pushed Grandma down the stairs. Figured he might know. I didn’t plan on doing it, but she hit me _one more time_ when I was already upset about something else. I don’t get upset often, not since the you-know. I don’t handle it well when I do.”

“She hit you a lot?”

“Few times a week. It was annoying, pretending I was hurt and sorry so she’d feel like she’d done enough. She tried to lock me in every night, too, not knowing Dad taught me - us - to pick locks.”

Crane turns back and gives him the ghost of a grin from under a sheaf of hair. “Every once in awhile, one of my cell visitors would forget to do up the bolt on the door when he left, so I’d only be kept in by the regular self-locking lock. I would check after every lights-out. I could sometimes get workable improvised tools from pickpocketing them when they...well….they didn’t generally take all their clothes off…”

Jonathan bites the inside of his cheek as Crane trails off and makes vague gestures. “Then what did you do?”

This snaps him out of it. “Right, then I used to go out and wander around as much as I dared before running back. I was discouraged from talking to other people much - I realize now probably because I wasn’t supposed to exist, or you weren’t but it was harder to hide you. No matter what else the admin screwed up, though, there was at least a headcount making sure everyone ate and showered sometimes. I couldn’t be kept in solitary indefinitely because I never attacked anybody, plus working _too_ hard to hide me would have in itself been suspicious. Like, _‘Why’s this ninety-pound kid who mostly just draws scarecrows on the floor in here 24/7 and why did nobody tell me? We can’t let them outright die in an oubliette, we have to have some standards._ Then a rat casually scuttles past.”

Jonathan snorts. He knows people with a similar sense of humor, but he’s talking to someone _with his sense of humor_. “Did you actually see rats?”

“No, but I heard them in the night. Though maybe they weren’t real. So I did leave for food every day and a shower every other day, plus whatever 19th century sadism they had planned, but I could be kept from ‘enrichment’ if it was deemed ‘overstimulating’.”

“Were you?” Jonathan wonders if Crane is getting chattier as he settles in, or if he has a lot to say on this subject in particular. 

“I was.” He looks sad for a second, but overall looks more pleased with himself. “ I did it safely because I found out where the security blind spots were from someone whose OCD made her pay a _lot_ of attention to detail. She liked me because I helped her arrange her food at mealtimes, especially rice. Without my help she never would’ve finished a meal before having to go back to her cell. I was watched pretty closely, so she made maps for me out of food. Guards thought she was just showing symptoms.”

“I am genuinely impressed, and if you’re up to it, I think our other friends would enjoy that story.” It says encouraging things about resourcefulness and resilience, as well as being kinda awesome. Jonathan used _our_ intentionally. 

“Really? I didn’t accomplish anything other than not go quite as stir-crazy as I would have otherwise. I didn’t try to escape the building or, like, do any sabotage. Getting caught only wandering around the halls, I might get away with: ‘Someone forgot to lock my door properly and my scary hallucinations chased me out here! _Sob!_ ’" Crane's energy dipped. "Plus the _gang_ figured out that I knew how to pick locks, and started using doorstops or wedging chairs under the knobs as well. I wasn't strong enough to force those.'”

“First of all, I like your backup plan. Second, the gang is either horribly dead or will be soon. Finally, you didn’t lie down and give up. You stuck it to them. That’s an accomplishment.” Jonathan pats a spot beside him on the log. “If you sit here and look up, there’s a birds’ nest. The chicks have grown and left but you can see the twigs. Don’t think it’s for crows. Too small.”

Once in place, Crane cranes his neck and looks where Jonathan is pointing. “Huh. So...helping you with Grandma, that made you love Nygma?”

“Not by itself. There were other things. Like, he helped me become emancipated rather than having to bother our uncle.”

“I almost forgot we have one. Is he still in Brazil?”

“Not anymore. He’s teaching anthropology in Seattle. He’s visited twice. He offered to be around, but I know he was relieved when I told him I was fine. Nygma’s the one who’s been around. When I had an idea for turning the fear inoculation to a fear serum, he taught me how to do it, and helped me get his husband to invest. Eventually, as we said, we figured out how to make a cozy happy pill from the original fear serum antidote. The fear stuff is for more exclusive use.”

“Oh.” Crane hugs his knees and adds softly, “If it’s okay, I’d, I’d, I’d really like it if you destroyed the toxin they made me come up with.”

That’s a bit of a wrench, given how interesting it is both chemically and from a behavioral psychology perspective. How did someone only recently diverged from Jonathan solved similar problems with far fewer resources and under much more pressure? But Harley will absolutely beat Jonathan half to death if she finds out he said anything other than: “Sure.”

“Uh. Maybe keep a handful of toxin samples under lock and key, for playing with in the lab but nothing else?” Crane looks apprehensive and fidgety. Jonathan doesn’t take notice of unimportant people’s body language, but if they are important, he becomes hyperfocused.

“Unless it’s produced by a biological organism, it’s not technically a toxin, and there haven’t been stories of people missing their adrenal glands again so I know yours probably isn’t.” Crane now looks downcast, so Jonathan adds, “But it makes for a catchy name. Thanks.”

“So he’s been a kind of teacher? Nygma. The Riddler.” Crane gets to his feet and goes to examine a mossy boulder, feeling the velvety green patches. 

“He’s also killed people to protect me and had a bit of a breakdown the last time I needed serious medical attention,” Jonathan says with slightly forced lightness. “He would like to visit for dinner, if you’re up for it. No science. Just dinner, maybe hanging out after dinner. He was a big help figuring out where you’d been kept in Arkham until recently.”

“Sounds okay.” Crane moves on to peeling some bark off a tree trunk and peering at the whiter meat of it inside. 

“He knows what it’s like.”

“What?”

“He doesn’t have a scarecrow, but he has other things. It’s been good to have someone to talk to about that part.” Jonathan is reasonably certain that it’s okay to share this information. 

Crane ponders this. “The bio said he spent time in Arkham, and found Indian Hill.”

“Yes. Didn’t make it very far down there, though. He’ll probably end up staying nearby at his cousin’s house, which is much closer than his own place. May he visit, too?”

“I don’t remember anything about a cousin.” Now Crane is crunching leaves in his hands. 

“Not a lot of people know that the Reader is the Riddler’s cousin, though a lot of people guess they might be related. They have a lot of similarities. I’m not even allowed to tell you his real name, though I’ve been given permission to inform you that he uses ‘Nicholas Anderson’ for day-to-day purposes.” 

“Is he...nice?”

“In the sense that Nefyn is nice,” Jonathan said after thinking about the definition of the word. “Nice by default, deadly by your fault. Nicer than Nygma, though Nygma will be nice to you. We’ll leave Cobblepot for another day. He’ll be kindly disposed to you but I think you might find him intimidating.”

“Okay.” Crane scatters the leaf shreds like confetti. “I was sort of friends with that woman, but it was always uncomfortable how many babies she’d hacked into pieces because they were asymmetrical. I - we - don’t have perfectly symmetrical faces.”

“Nobody in my social circle has hacked babies into pieces. Admittedly, some adults. That wasn’t how they died. It was part of the body disposal process.” And two already-terminally-ill children, but it had been hard enough getting Harley to accept that part. Not the time.

Crane shrugs and watches the clouds.

****

The walk is pleasant. Late lunch is fine. For no immediate reason, Crane crawls under the guest bed afterwards to cry. Dry, barely audible, shuddery sort of crying. 

Harley’s voice. “I’m here. Wanna come out and talk about it?”

“No.”

“Would you like to hold my hand? I can reach out.”

She demonstrates, and he does. At first he clasps but he gets bolder and interlaces their fingers. “Jonathan, Jonathan says he, he, he and his not-boyfriend - that they have relationships with, uh, multiple people?”

“They do. Nefyn’s got too much heart for one person. We all tease him, say he’s a disgrace to his profession.” Her hand is warm and the skin is smooth. “Ivy used to be in a triad, but she’s found she prefers having just the one. Jonathan introduced us a little over a year ago.”

“I see.”

She rubs her thumb over the back of his hand. “Crane. I don’t want to gaslight you. Your feelings are valid, no matter what people say. But consider that I’m the first person to have hugged you after your father’s death, and that you are in a vulnerable state. You’ve only interacted with four people since being plucked from the jaws of Really Sucky less than twenty-four hours ago. Jonathan is not the most emotionally available at the best of times. Nefyn’s got cognitive dissonance because you look so much like his not-boyfriend. Kali is a professional.”

“What are you saying?”

“It’s okay that you’ve got a little crush, but bear in mind it might not be how you would feel if it weren’t for these factors.”

“O-oh. Right.” His face heats up.

“You don’t have to stop crying just because I’m here. I want to be a psychotherapist. It’s good practice for me.”

He laughs the smallest bit through the ache in his chest. “I wish I’d had one like you.”

“When we were in high school, Jonathan and I made a pact. He’ll be a psychiatrist. I’ll be a psychologist. And we are going to fix the fuck out of Arkham. Make it the way we want.”

This makes Crane go into helplessly loud sobbing, though he buries his face in the crook of his own arm. “That’s really good,” he says when he can breathe.

She’s still got his hand. “Funny story?”

“Uh huh?”

“I fell head-over-heels for Jonathan first time we met. He freaked out a bit when he found out.”

“Oh goodness.” There is bare floor down here. It is less comfortable than the bath mat looked. Though Crane is no stranger to fetal positions on bare floors. 

“I am not joking. That’s one of the reasons I was looking for it in you, and that’s one of the reasons I know it’s likely your circumstances, not your personality, making you feel this way. It’s like you both got a serious wound at the same time, and his was treated imperfectly and healed with dead-nerved scar tissue. Meanwhile yours was almost untreated at all and is still open. Still raw. I know him well, and you are far easier to read than he is.”

He lets go of her hand so he can crawl out more easily. “Ivy won’t be mad, right?”

“No. I’ve talked everything over with her. Maybe you can meet her later this week. Maybe we’ll not introduce you to new people tomorrow, just as a buffer day. Sorry that Riddler and Reader have crowded schedules for the rest of the week. Also I think Riddler is antsy to see you with his own eyes.”

They end up on the couch downstairs with his head on a pillow in Harley’s lap, with her petting his hair. It’s too warm for a blanket but he’s got a light shawl draped on him, which he is rubbing between his fingers. Nefyn and Jonathan are having a good-humored argument about how Jonathan organizes his living room shelves and what would be most suitable reading for their guest or whether they should all watch a movie. “You _sure_ your girlfriend is okay with this?”

Harley takes a picture of him with her phone, then sends it to Ivy. A few minutes later, she shows him the reply: _omg sad stray bb copy of ur bff?? cuddle him lots!!!!! tell him I think you’re cute too, nothing wrong with good taste <3_


	3. And That Leaves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, and only this chapter, contains a non-graphic reference to past willing underage (teen, not child) and attempted non-con (fended off with satisfying badassery). Not poor Crane for once, though there are more mentions of stuff he's already tagged for.

Crane falls asleep half an hour into _My Neighbor Totoro_. Jonathan advises they keep watching because a background of pleasant music and amiable subtitled Japanese dialogue might subconsciously ward off Crane’s nightmares. Besides, Nefyn has never seen it and is clearly enjoying himself.

“He mentioned that he got used to sleeping a lot in Arkham, as an escape and because he rarely had much else to do,” Harley says softly. Crane’s head is still on a pillow on her lap. “I don’t think the gang was letting him sleep much.”

“Should we be concerned about the thumbsucking?” Nefyn asks. 

If Jonathan were capable of feeling embarrassment these days, he might have been at the sight of someone who looked so much like him regressing so childishly from trauma. Thankfully he’s not. It’s just interesting. Jonathan makes a ‘so-so’ gesture. “We sucked our thumbs until we were four and Dad got concerned about our teeth growing crookedly. He started coating them in something nontoxic but bitter every day. Mom argued that it was an extreme measure, but it worked. After she died four years later we did it in our sleep for the first few weeks. Then he started taping mittens on us at bedtime.”

“Gerald started conditioning you early,” Nefyn mutters. Jonathan shrugs. Nefyn is super severe when it comes to judging Jonathan’s dad, who had issues but tried to parent lovingly in his own twisted way, compared to Nefyn’s own aunt and uncle, who were maliciously responsible for 95% of his physical scarring and 60% of his mental scarring. It’s touching, kind of.

“Your choice of pronouns is interesting,” Harley says, nimbly skipping over the familiar familial danger zone.

“It’s only logical.” It wouldn’t be fair to rob Crane of his claim to their pre-split past.

When the movie ends and Harley wants to start getting ready for their dinner guests, she nudges Crane awake as gently as she can. But his eyes fly open and he cringes. “I’m sorry, Warden, please don’t -”

“It’s okay, you’re at your clone’s house,” Harley says, then smacks her forehead. “That might not have been the most comforting thing in the world, out of context.”

Crane sits up and rubs his eyes. “No, it’s good. There is absolutely no way that in Arkham: one, a girl my age would be waking me, and two, anyone would say anything like that. Everyone’s rants were surprisingly predictable.”

“Otherwise the field of psychology wouldn’t be worth much,” Jonathan says, rising out of his chair. “Do you want to fill us in on why you said what you just said? You don’t have to.”

“Everything you imagine will be worse, I bet.” Crane yawns and stretches, glancing at the wall clock.

Jonathan inclines his head. “You know us.”

In a casual tone, Crane explains, “Only one person would wake me by touching me like that. He didn’t like it if I wasn’t already awake when he visited. It would make the visit less bearable.”

“Oh god, I’m sorry.” Harley looks miserable.

“I’m enough of a mess that all of you are probably going to upset me at some point. Just resign yourself to it. It doesn’t have to be a big deal.” Crane gets to his feet. “I promised to make salad.”

“I’ll show you where everything is,” Nefyn offers, and leads him to the kitchen.

When Crane’s out of earshot, Harley folds her arms and sighs heavily. “He sounded way too much like you just now.”

“Is that so tragic?” Jonathan asks, genuinely curious.

“He sounds like a part of you I don’t wish on people, even copies of you,” she clarifies, though not much more clearly.

****

Crane used to do about 60-70% of the cooking at home after the age of ten, but his time in Indian Hill and Arkham has made him rusty enough that he should probably stick to easy things. It doesn’t escape his notice how intently Nefyn is watching him slice tomatoes. Nefyn himself is finely chopping vegetables for a big pot of soup like a human food processor.

“If I tried to hurt myself or anyone else, I’m sure you’d be able to grab me in time,” Crane says. 

“I’m the most likely person in this house to succeed, at any rate,” Nefyn says in his usual amiable voice. “One of my other partners scars himself as part of a personal ritual, but it’s very contained and actually keeps him grounded. That I’m okay with. Doing it because of self-hate or misery, that’s something different. Just like how I’m okay with how another of my partners drinks in certain settings and encourage her to lay off in other contexts.”

“Is it because of what I just confessed? And is there any stale bread? We like croutons. Well, he did, I still do. I think.”

“Partly. Yes. And he does.” Nefyn fetches part of a sliced loaf and butters a few of the slices before cutting the crusts off in a quick swirl of a blade. It’s fun watching him cube them into perfectly equal pieces. _Proprioception_ , Crane remembers, is the sense of knowing where your own body parts are no matter what, and Nefyn seems to have that with the knife in his hand. It’s an extension of his hand.

Crane turns on the oven so they can pop them in and get them crispy. “Garlic powder?”

“Yep.”

Having forgotten a lot of social niceties and knowing Nefyn isn’t going to harm him, Crane decides to stop trying to be diplomatic. “Are you attracted to me, too?”

Nefyn stops cubing and looks him up and down. “Aesthetically, somewhat. I mean, you look like him, and I’ve been finding him attractive for years. Practically, no. You look like him if he was really, really, really unwell, like I keep wanting to carry you to bed and tuck you in and not let you do anything until you look better. But I get that it would be one of the worst things I could do to you. Oh, no onions in the salad, Nygma hates onions.”

“Okay.” Besides, he isn’t in the mood for more tears.

“Crane?”

“Yeah?” Crane starts on a carrot. He chops carefully. His hands don’t always obey him these days, and sometimes he isn’t sure where they are. Where any of him is. It’d be nice if he could borrow some of Nefyn’s proprioception. 

Nefyn’s speech is like a ball rolling down a gentle slope. Not fast or frantic, but with momentum. “I’m not prone to talking in my sleep, but I’m told there was this one time - I mentioned I was Victor Zsasz's apprentice, right? There’s a tradition with his apprentices that at some point during the first year, he and his crew stage a surprise, very realistic abduction. Just one, just to see what we’re made of, deliberately going after weak points in what is actually a safe environment. Though I didn’t know that. Everyone was very sweet to me for days afterwards, especially the first night, but some things got shaken loose. I’m told that in my sleep that night I snarled, _I don’t care if you pay extra, I don’t take my pants off. Let go._ ”

Ah, this was about what Crane said earlier. “How old were you?” He doesn’t mean during the fake kidnapping.

Nefyn turns to fetch a baking pan. “Fourteen. I was living under a bridge, you know, getting by with what I could offer, but I had boundaries. Set menu.”

“Ew. Not what you did, I get that, I’ve _done_ things like that, while I was thankfully of age. Just that phrasing. Especially since we’re making dinner.”

“My main ways of dealing with things are physical affection, knives, or irreverence, sorry. I dealt with the original situation using a knife, but you can’t literally take a stab at your memories. My point is, kid, that while I don’t know _exactly_ what you’ve been through...” He starts twirling the knife helplessly. Which is not an adverb one associates with knife twirling.

“Thank you,” Crane says. “I won’t tell anyone.”

Nefyn’s tone finally loses a bit of its energy. “I’m pretty free with the info that I got arrested for chopping a dude’s dick off and that he deserved it. I don’t generally tell people that I’d had my mouth on it moments earlier. The other you knows, and Kali and Victor. Let’s keep it that way?”

“No problem. Aren’t you worried Harley might have overheard just now?”

“It was decided those two would get out of earshot in case you and I had a heart-to-heart.” Nefyn spreads aluminum foil out on the backing sheet and arranged the croutons on it.

“You’re manipulating me through cozy domesticity?” Though the kitchen is less domestic in aesthetic than Crane remembers. Jonathan got rid of a lot of the old-lady knickknacks Crane remembers from their one visit as a kid, like the timer that looked like an Easter egg and the little sampler on the wall that said LET US OFT SPEAK KIND WORDS TO EACH OTHER (when it should have said WE CONSTANTLY SPEAK HYPOCRITICAL WORDS TO EACH OTHER). It’s sleek and uncluttered now, as much as a kitchen can be. 

“Maybe.”

“That’s the nicest way anyone’s manipulated me in, like, a decade,” Crane says dryly.

They work in silence together for a few minutes before Nefyn clears his throat and says, “I really hope I just created a sense of solidarity rather than triggered you.”

Crane almost laughs grimly, but he realizes it might be taken the wrong way. At best insensitive, at worst unhinged. “I promise that it’s super obvious and audible when I’m not okay.” 

“Shit, _he_ says that.” They both laugh, only a little grimly, and Crane suspects that they both swallow down something dark in the process. 

Another period of silence later, and Crane says, “Thank you for telling me. I doubt it was easy.”

Nefyn shrugs one shoulder as he dons oven mitts. “It gets easier.”

“Does it?” Hope is a feathered thing, and scarecrows don’t mesh well with feathered things. Though given where he miraculously is now, Crane’s maybe letting that change a tiny bit.

“Well, it got easier for me. I admit I have very little idea how my copy works, let alone how you work. Get out of the way, I’m opening the oven.”

Crane surprises both of them by hugging him the moment it is safe to do so. He understands why Jonathan goes for this guy, lean and warm and dangerous but not to him. Nefyn hums and ruffles his hair. 

Dinner ends up being chicken soup with dumplings and a side salad. Simple. Nefyn shares some good stories. All of Crane’s good stories are also Jonathan’s, so he’s probably heard them. When Crane’s done all he can do, he follows Harley’s summons to try on the starter wardrobe she and Nefyn picked out for him.

“Well, he drove and I selected. You can’t trust him with colors other than black, white, and blue.” She adds that since Crane’s been so used to dingy environments recently, she selected some jewel tones for him to try as well as some black. “Outright bright colors seemed wrong but so did only providing the grungy look Jonathan goes for when he’s being super casual. Maybe it might boost your mood? Help remind you you’re somewhere else now? If you don’t like it, we can return them, just don’t remove the tags.”

He nods and picks up a burgundy red henley shirt with dark brown half-sleeves. “I don’t really care about aesthetics. It’s soft.”

“Sensory comfort can matter a lot,” Harley says. “Maybe go for the slightly smart casual this evening, rather than super casual. Our guests go for a old-fashioned dapper look a lot. You’d think it was hipster, except they’re so sincere about it.”

“I want to know what you think of Nygma and Reader.” Even the black jeans are a softer denim than he remembers denim usually being. They got him three sets of underwear, too. He starts taking off his clothes to try on a whole new outfit. 

“Whoa, let me turn my back before you start getting naked!” She blushes and turns around.

Crane freezes. Then he realizes. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, I forgot.”

Her voice softens and she chances a peek at his expression. “What’d you forget?”

“I hadn’t had a shower or bath without someone watching for, you know, a long time, until the one I had really early this morning.” He waits until she turns back around before he continues undressing. 

“Nygma and Reader, huh? I generally call Nygma either Mr. Nygma or Riddler. Jonathan called him Mr. Nygma for ages but switched to Nygma as a compromise eventually, because Nygma really wants Jonathan to call him Ed but that’s too familiar I guess? Ivy, on the other hand, calls him Green Dad, but she’s done a lot of one-on-one mentorship time with him and also she has newly discovered super powers to protect herself from mob bosses getting cranky.”

“Does Nygma intimidate you?” The jeans are a little loose, but he should be able to keep them on without a belt. 

“Little bit. If Jonathan hadn’t put his foot down, he would have killed me for accidentally finding out he and Jonathan are partners in crime. He’s been pleasant to me in the year-ish since then, though, and he’s kind of a colossal dork once you get to know him? Penguin, though, I wouldn’t want to deal with him without Jonathan as a buffer. Or Reader. There’s a saying that up against the Reader compared to any other Rogue, you’re more likely to lose, but you’re more likely to live. He’s generally sweet or at least benign if he has no issue with you, and it takes a lot for him to have an issue with you.”

Crane likes the drape of the shirt as well as the texture. “I’m decent. Do you have scissors for the tags? I’d like to wear these right away. Still got my own underwear.”

“Should be okay,” Harley says, fetching small embroidery scissors from a drawer. “Something about R&R you should know. Sometimes Riddler acts, like, weirdly possessive and bossy towards Reader? To the point where it makes me uncomfortable? But nobody goes there, okay? Nobody comments on it. It’s a serious danger zone. Then suddenly they’re back to the brotherly best buddies dynamic again. I’ve learned since slipping into the Gotham underworld that I have to pick my battles. Reader’s a grown man.”

“Thanks for the tip.” He stands still while she snips him free.


	4. Just Two to Grow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a moment of uncomfortable emotionally abusive vibes here. Not towards Crane.

About ten minutes before the guests are scheduled to show up, Crane approaches Nefyn as he is lounging on the couch and reading a magazine. “Hi?”

Nefyn closes the magazine. “What’s up?”

Every word is an uphill battle, but he promised Harley he’ll tell someone if he felt this way. “I...I want to...hurt people right now. Not you three. I believe you could stop me with your bare hands. Trained.”

“Believe me, I could outright end you with my bare hands if I wanted to, smart cookie.” Nefyn’s tone is reassuring, regardless of his questionable way of expressing the reassurance. A part of Crane idly wonders if Jonathan finds that charming somehow. Or hot. “You’re imagining running out the door and putting some fear in people? There are people who deserve that fear, sure, but you’re not in a position to do it safely.”

Crane just nods, wondering how it takes so much energy just to stand still.

Nefyn opens his arms. “C’mere. I got you. For years, I periodically had these terrible urges to gut my guardians, long before it was actually possible to do it and get away with it. It’ll pass.”

Once Crane is tucked against him, a grounding arm around his waist, Nefyn goes back to reading what turns out to be a _National Geographic_. Crane cautiously puts a head on his shoulder and isn’t rebuffed. “I don’t want to kiss you.”

“I didn’t think you did. Oh, hey, cool, glow-in-the-dark mice. Well, glow-in-the-blacklight mice. They put jellyfish genes in ‘em.” He angles the magazine so Crane could see.

“Why would you want to do that? For designer pets?”

“Nah, though that’d be cool. It says it’s valuable to have test subjects with an obvious unique feature, because it’s an easy way to tell the experimental methodology is working. It’s a sign that the mice really are modified with the important genes, too, like the ones that are supposed to make them disease resistant.” Nefyn gestures at the neatly organized box of magazines under the coffee table. “Want your own?”

“I’m okay. Other than…”

A sage nod. “Other than the ways in which you _aren’t_ okay. Wanna hear about the mutant mice, then?”

“Okay.” _Think of how all those people would scream_ the Scarecrow hisses, like water poured on coals. Crane clenches his jaw and listens to the mouse science until Jonathan descends the stairs.

Jonathan’s put on a partially-buttoned dark blue shirt over a black tee, and added [a thumb-size obsidian blade on a leather cord around his neck.](http://cdn.supadupa.me/shop/13193/images/2229824/silver_chamber_jewellery_obsidian_pendant_grande.jpg) The part connected to the cord is set in a small chunk of silver. It looks a little bit like a crow’s beak. “Found it in my sock drawer. You’re really untidy when you ‘help’ me take stuff off.”

Nefyn smiles. “I’m glad you found it. I went to all that trouble teaching you how to use it in an emergency. Can you believe that this guy used to hide safety pins in his hair back when it was long enough?”

“Needed shorter hair for med school interviews,” Jonathan explains. 

“Was it a present?” Crane feels a stab of jealousy that thankfully lasts only a few seconds.

“Yeah, my birthday last year. Our birthday?”

Crane deflects with a dry joke. “I wasn’t there, so…” 

Nefyn gives him a gentle squeeze. “You can be here for the next one, though.”

“Before I knew Jonathan well enough, I totally thought your birthday should have been Halloween,” Harley comments as she emerges from the kitchen. She’s been on soup-babysitting duty. Her apron to protect her dress from splashes is covered in skulls and sharp-thorned red roses. 

“We were probably conceived around then,” Crane says casually. Then wishes he hadn’t, given Harley’s blush. 

Jonathan simply looks thoughtful, then counts off on his fingers. “You’re right. If you factor in the average time it takes for true fertilization to result from coitus, plus for the pregnancy to be noticed, it’s _exactly_ Halloween.”

Haley facepalms. “Oh my god, you two.”

“What? They’ve both been dead for years. The standard psychological barriers of disgust that protect most of us from committing incest are moot.” Jonathan blinks. “Oh, you’re now thinking about your own parents? Sorry.”

“STOP IT.” Harley looks to Nefyn for solidarity, but he’s holding back giggles.

The doorbell comes to the rescue. Jonathan lets their guests in.

It isn’t surprising that Edward “the Riddler” Nygma and whoever the Reader really is are related. They are gawky and gangly and slender, with brown hair and high cheekbones. Good-looking behind the dork layer, more pretty than handsome. They are also both wearing large retro glasses. Nygma wears a tie and lots of soft, muted green, not like the dazzling emerald in his Riddler costume. Reader is in black, brown, and cream, just like his costume. He has no tie, but a collared shirt and corduroys keep him from being totally casual. His one touch of green is the face of his expensive-looking watch, which is large on his narrow left wrist. The wide stainless steel band makes Crane morbidly think of a handcuff.

“Wow! You really do look alike,” Nygma says. “Wasn’t sure what else I was expecting, what with being clones -”

The Reader holds up a hand. “Doubles. _Clones_ in a real-world sense, as opposed to a science-fiction sense, would mean one of them would currently be a small child genetically identical to the other one, but with different phenotypes and memories.”

“I thought we’d made a mutual pact to be more colloquial,” Nygma replies, raising an eyebrow.

“I guess so. Hello...uh….” The Reader’s hands flails briefly. “What are you doing about names?”

“I’m Jonathan, he’s Crane,” Jonathan says. 

“Reader actually learned something while sorting through all those stolen records yesterday that might help with that, if you don’t find it a satisfactory solution,” Nygma says.

Harley clears her throat. “I think, so we all have appetites, we should hold off on that subject until after dinner.”

“I agree,” Nefyn says. “I hope you don’t mind if I continue hanging onto this guy until we go to the dining room. Harley and I have been improvising touch therapy.”

Crane feels himself blush, but the Reader says, “I think that’s an excellent idea. Michelangelo said, _To touch can be to give life._ The context was different of course, but I think since you’ve spent so much time isolated - and unlike your _double_ are not averse to casual physical contact - the possibility of activating your orbitofrontal cortex…”

He keeps talking with extensive gestures. Only Harley and Nefyn are paying attention. Crane feels himself dissociating and focused on the physical sensations his brain can’t make up. His hallucinations have never been tactile. Nygma steps over to Jonathan and whispers a question, pointing at a spot on his shoulder. Jonathan shakes his head.

“What was that about?” Crane asks Jonathan quietly when making their way to their seats.

“I took a bullet for him a few weeks ago and he wanted to know if it still hurts,” Jonathan replies

“Are you under the impression you’re more of an asshole than you actually are?” 

“By definition, I wouldn’t be able to answer that question accurately. And I haven’t told you everything I’ve done.” Jonathan takes a box of pills out of his pocket and puts it next to his dinner plate. Crane notices it’s brass and enamel, with painted forget-me-nots. He’d know it anywhere. Mom’s.

_strangle him strangle him strangle him why does he get everything beautiful YOU should have it why did he get away with doing exactly what you were punished for put your hands around his throat he doesn’t deserve it imposter kill him there can only be one_

Crane makes sure not to sit next to him or across from him.

***

“Let’s go out back and watch the fireflies while we talk heavy things?” Harley suggests. “Dishes can wait.”

Crane watches the fireflies from his seat on the ground, digging up clumps of grass while Dr. Spencer Reid explains what he found in the various stolen files, some on paper and some on a flash drive. A former FBI agent who can read absurdly fast, and memorize as he goes, was the natural candidate for the task. Jonathan looks from his double to Reid and back again to see how they were reacting to the intel.

Disappointingly, Reid didn’t learn anything about the duplication itself. He found the memo detailing a cover story for why they had a prisoner who so heavily resembled someone living freely in Gotham. He recites:

_Jonah Crane is the identical twin of Jonathan Crane. Sent to private care after he tried to kill Jonathan, was transferred to Arkham upon adulthood. Jonathan repressed the memories of his brother and his parents chose not to remind him. In order to deal with guilt, Jonah has managed to convince himself that he himself is Jonathan and “Jonah” never existed. Given Jonathan’s own mental instability and their shared fixation on a scarecrow they could see from their childhood bedroom, they should not see or hear about each other. Jonah is well-behaved when not stressed by social interaction. Recommended sole interaction with other patients be closely supervised use of the mess hall. Showers to take place during off times and under guard. His recurring hallucinations of demonic scarecrows are more fearful than aggressive, and easily subdued. Addressing Jonah simply as “Crane” is acceptable to him, and recommended._

Nygma adds, “I know my way around city archives and we took a gander on the way here. There’s a fake birth certificate for ‘Jonah Crane’. Don’t know how long it’s been there.”

“Jonah, huh?” Crane lies back on the grass, propped up on his elbows, and sings softly. “ _We are two mariners, our ships’ sole survivors in this belly of a whale. Its ribs are ceiling beams, its guts are carpeting. I guess we have some time to kill._ ”

Jonathan goes to sit next to Crane. “ _But oh what providence, what divine intelligence, that you should survive as well as me._ ”

“This is a really different context,” Crane mumbles.

“I should hope so.” Seeing as the next line of the part Jonathan quoted was, _It gives my heart great joy to see your eyes fill with fear._

Harley says from her lawn chair, “This means it’ll be easier for us to construct a legal identity for you once it’s safe. Think of it like that.”

“And what will I do then?” Crane sits up and hugged his knees. “I haven’t made any real choices in years. I’ve been in a...the box they put the rats in. Where they get shocks if they’re bad and food if they do tricks.”

“Skinner box,” Reid supplies. “You don’t have to make any major choices anytime soon. If you find it empowering to be more involved in the process of tying up loose ends, we’ll involve you. If you find it overwhelming, we can take care of things for you.”

“How much of what you’ve told us and Kali are you okay with these two knowing?” Jonathan asks.

“They can know, if it’s relevant. But I need to go for a walk now.” He’s trembling. Harley and Nefyn insist on going with him and establish that they will stay on the property and the familiar portions of the woods. Jonathan is grateful.

When they were gone, Nygma leans forward in his lawn chair with his forearms resting on the weathered wooden patio table. Jonathan is pretty sure Grandpa built it. “Is there something about him you want to share?”

Jonathan dusts himself off and joined the table with Nygma and Reid. The three of them are in a semicircle facing the most firefly-heavy part of the lawn. Jonathan Crane tried so hard to catch them as a kid, until Dad taught them to sit still and blink a penlight to draw them in.

He chooses his words as precisely and clinically as possible. “I might behave irrationally out of intense emotion, and because it happens so rarely, I won’t be able to adjust my approach to it like others can. It’s going to affect my effectiveness when it comes to securing my double’s future.”

Reid gives him an assessing gaze before his face goes from gentle seriousness to something more rigid. “He was sexually abused?” 

“You could tell?” Jonathan asks, suddenly wanting a glass of water.

Nygma inhales sharply. Reid gives Nygma’s shoulder a single awkward pat. “There are cues I learned to look for, yes, which can feed into a hunch, but it’s mostly how _you’re_ behaving.”

“For what it’s worth, I couldn’t tell,” Nygma says. 

“He said he wasn’t forced. That it was his idea for having something to bargain with in order to get _incredibly generous privileges_ like _books to read_. I told him that because of the power dynamic he was not capable of true consent and was being taken advantage of, blah blah blah. He says he agrees, but I’m not sure how much he’s internalized blame, you know? One of the people responsible, I’d already killed before I knew this. The other one, I haven’t yet. Ivy confirmed that the warden was the only one who knew what Crane really is, so this remaining guy’s just a mundane abuser.” 

Nygma sighs. “Good old Arkham. Suing them for mistreating Oswald didn’t teach them. Me killing key members of staff didn’t teach them.”

“Harley and I might be the only hope,” Jonathan says. Gallows humor. 

“I still wish you’d let me arrange some sort of national exposé,” Reid mutters. He winces when Nygma grabs his wrist. Nygma is generally in favor of the Reader’s odd mixture of villainous/vigilante solo adventures, but anything that might draw outside-Gotham attention to him is strictly out. 

“You know I love you too much to let you do something that dangerous, Spencer,” Nygma hisses. 

“You’re hurting me,” Reid says softly. Nygma flinches and lets him go. 

Jonathan is very glad the exchange didn’t happen in front of Crane. Jonathan’s familial-emotional-abuse-and-manipulation trigger was set off back when he found out what Nygma did (and to a milder degree is still doing) to a younger relative. That’s considering how Jonathan was already emotionally close to Nygma. He understood the choices had been to let himself and Jonathan be identified as the culprit behind an FBI investigation, kill Reid, keep Reid prisoner indefinitely, or modify how Reid felt about the situation. With Crane, who doesn’t have that context, it would be worse.

Nygma clears his throat. “Oswald, Spencer, and I discussed your security here. The fact that you live in this house is a matter of public record, which is a risk.”

“On the other hand, Crane being in a familiar, relatively positive environment is likely to help ground and comfort him,” Reid says. “Has he said anything about this house?”

“He asked about a chipmunk we ran after, and remembered the alpacas Grandpa raised. Nefyn mentioned that he seemed at relatively ease in the kitchen. We didn’t like our grandmother, even back then, but we liked our grandfather. How do you profile him?”

Reid hesitates for a second before beginning. “Based on what I know about your shared past, your differing paths since then, and how you’ve evolved, and, and, and what little I’ve observed of him, and what you just told me...I’m not casting aspersions, to be clear, I mean except for Harley and Crane everyone currently on the property is already technically…I think he’s potentially about one stressor away from a violent rampage. Probably not towards the handful of people who’ve been kind to him, but...You, Ed, Nefyn, and I are all technically serial killers, Jonathan. I say technically because Nefyn is a professional and you haven’t killed anyone in years, which muddies the waters, but…”

“We’ve all commited the legal definition of murder at least three times, in different locations, with a cooling off period in between.” Jonathan has enjoyed bits and pieces of hearing about Reid’s former career during the rare times he’s willing to share. Reid only ever talks about the theory behind profiling “UnSubs”, or unidentified subjects, though, never about his former teammates and their adventures. 

The tension from the previous clash with Nygma leaves Reid as he explains further, with substantial gesturing. “Right. The four of us are different subtypes based on our motivations. Ed and Oswald are considered the ‘power/control’ type. I think that’s fairly obvious. I would likely be considered ‘mission-based’ because that category is for killers who believe the world would be better if a certain type of person were not in it, and are not interested in going after targets who don’t fit that type. Nefyn is ‘hedonistic profit’, because he’s in it for money but he incidentally enjoys himself. Zsasz, on the other hand, is the ‘hedonistic thrill’ type, because he enjoys himself and incidentally makes money. See the distinction? Also Zsasz plays with his victims whenever practical, whether by torture or simply causing shock and alarm, while Nefyn almost always kills instantly and with very little pain…”

“You were going to talk about Jonathan at some point,” Nygma says, one corner of his mouth turned up. 

“Yes! Sorry. You, Jonathan, fall under ‘visionary’, because you were spurred on by a hallucination of some kind of powerful supernatural being. Not to diminish the importance of -”

“I’m not offended,” Jonathan says. 

Reid flashes him a quick, relieved smile. “One thing all of us have in common, though, is that we are ‘organized’. We plan ahead. We clean up afterwards. We are capable of maintaining the facade of a normal life, and can maintain reasonably healthy personal relationships and financial solvency. Interestingly, three of us fall into the most common demographic for serial killers in general, which is white males between ages 25-45...Jonathan is precocious.”

“Does that mean I have to quit in just over a decade?” Nygma asks with mock horror. Reid suppresses a scandalized laugh behind his hand.

“You think Crane would be ‘disorganized’,” Jonathan says. It’s getting dark now, the fireflies dispersing. 

“Yes.” Reid makes eye contact with Jonathan. “Disorganized types are easier to catch. Their lives, such as they are, fall apart. We don’t want that for him. Worse, depending on the nature and severity of what tips him over the brink, Crane might well end up as a ‘spree’ killer, which is when you kill a large number of people at once in a single location, then directly or indirectly attempt suicide.”

“Indirectly, as in charging at armed law enforcement with a gun in your hand, proclaiming that you have no fear?” Jonathan asks, looking away. 

“I’m sorry.” Reid makes it sound like he’s expressing condolences for losing Dad a few days ago rather than more than six years. 

“You haven’t done me any wrong,” Jonathan says. “I’m in favor of keeping Crane here if possible, Nygma. Anything that might help him. Besides, I selfishly would prefer to be home if I have to be in hiding, too.”

Nygma runs his hand back through his hair. “Never be the only two people on the property. Don’t be out of earshot of each other, if you can’t be in line of sight. At least one of the other people should be a real threat to intruders. I’m not sure Harley counts.”

“She’s been taking various lessons since she joined the Dark Side, but I understand your point. Ivy, Brigit, and Selina aren’t going to want their hard work retrieving Crane to go to waste. I think Thistle feels responsibility for Crane, and I’m relatively friendly with two of the Zsaszettes.” By which Jonathan meant Nefyn had invited him to a threesome with each. Both had turned out reasonably well. Candy liked incorporating melted chocolate, appropriately enough. 

“Get in contact with them. Set up a rotation. If any of them want money, I’ll pay.” Nygma’s clenching his fists and staring at the spot where the bullet hit Jonathan instead of him, so Jonathan knows not to argue. 

“Let’s go start working on dishes,” Jonathan says instead. “Maybe we can watch something after with the other three. Or play something.”

“I brought Cards Against Humanity,” Nygma says hopefully. “It’s in the car. Has Crane ever played?”

“My first game was at your house. So unless people play that in Arkham - or played it in Indian Hill - I doubt it.” Jonathan honors that mental image with several seconds of imagination. Nygma snorts.

***

The walk helps. Crane’s chaperones tell pleasant stories about their lives and don’t ask about his, and Harley holds his hand. When they get back, there’s a bizarre card game that Crane elects to watch while making his way through a pack of strawberry Twizzlers, listening to the classical music station Reader switched on as background. 

The game ends when the music abruptly fizzes out and an upset female voice says, _“Genius boy? Honey? It’s me. There’s still a chance, we can still make it right -”_

In response, Nygma practically leaps over to the stereo to switch it off, and removes the batteries for good measure. “How. Does. She. Do. That.”

The Reader’s gone pale. “I have no idea.”

“She’s breaking our deal. The truce should now be void.”

“Technically, no, she isn’t. But I can’t tell her to stop without breaking our deal. You’re not going to hurt her.”

“I don’t think you realize that she needs to die for this.”

The Reader gets to his feet. His voice is slow, calm, and full of ice. “Oh, I realize that you think so. If you want me to do whatever you say, you should have handed me over to Zsasz from the beginning. I suppose there’s still time. Because that’s what it would take for me to stand by and let that happen.”

“I just want you _safe_. She doesn’t understand who you are anymore. Not like I do.”

“Does Oswald threaten to go after Dr. Thompkins?” The Reader neatly puts his cards back in the box. “This is the one card game I don’t always win. Goodnight, you four. Make your own arrangements, Eddie Nashton, I don’t want you in my house tonight.”

Nygma’s jaw clenches and he stomps down Jonathan’s basement just as Reader slams the door on his way out. Jonathan runs after Nygma. Nefyn runs after Reader. 

Crane realizes that he’s trembling. He doesn’t know what that was, especially not the 'Eddie Nashton' bit. Birth name? It's not like its differently gendered, so what's the problem, though?

Harley lets him curl around her on the couch again and sighs. “That was more dramatic than usual, but it’s like I said.”

“You did warn me,” Crane says. He hands her a Twizzler, having nothing else to give.

She pretends it’s a mustache. “Supervillain family’s even weirder than normal family. You still glad we found you?”

“I’m very glad. I’m just...mystified.”

“One day at a time.”

He nods. “One down, however many more to go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quoted lyrics are from "The Mariner's Revenge Song" by The Decemberists. Naturally.


	5. One for Sorrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of one corvid rhyme, beginning of another. 
> 
> There are references to distressing experiments on animals, but none actually occur in this chapter. There are also references to canon-typical mad science and villainy on humans, but you were already expecting that. Oh, and some thoughts on Reid's drug issues.

Jonathan wakes to the sound of a knock on the door, and the accompanying, now-familiar sensation of Nefyn in a sudden protective crouch over him with a throwing knife at the ready.

“It’s Harley, no stabbing please,” says the voice on the other side. “Just telling you Crane’s got a cold and wants to be alone. He’s accepted the compromise of me sitting quietly in the same room as him.”

“Thank you!” Jonathan replies, then nudges Nefyn back by his side.

Nefyn puts the knife on the nightstand and nestles as close to Jonathan as he can while also respecting his personal space. “Got a call after your meds knocked you out for the night. Victor definitely needs me at six AM tomorrow.”

“Must be a huge job, for him to say _needs_ , not wants,” Jonathan idly comments, shifting so he can see Nefyn’s face. Neither Jonathan nor Nefyn - unlike most of his Family - are currently under official suspicion for any crimes. To help with that, any exploits that don’t involve each other are described in the vaguest of terms if at all.

Jonathan knows Knifepoint’s role in a big Casa del Zsasz Op is not by Zsasz’s side or watching his back like a Zsaszette. Knifepoint lurks in shadows, throats cut or blades slid between the ribs of anyone who might sound an alarm or slip away. That means a lot of henchpeople expected. Though Knifepoint also sometimes gives cooperative bystanders assistance in running far enough away from possible stray bullets. Softie.

“Mm.” Nefyn yawns and sprawls out on top of his half of the comforter, pulling a thinner royal blue throw over his underwear-clad self. Jonathan needs more covers at night than he does. Being on different sides of a heavy blanket makes Nefyn feel less literally suffocated by warmth and Jonathan less figuratively suffocated by clinginess. “I should probably be home for dinner to get my head back in the game. Victor says he’s cool with swapping out Thistle for me if I’m cool with taking her chores…”

“How was Reid?” Jonathan interrupts. He knows it’s rude, but he has no idea and it’s important. He focused on calming Nygma and persuading him to take Jonathan’s car to fetch his own car from Reid’s driveway, and then the drowsiness from his current antipsychotic set in.

“I promised not to share anything, but...not fabulous. He promised not to relapse into narcotics. No promise that he wouldn’t pop a few Paperboys once he got home.”

“Paperboy is harmless when taken properly,” Jonathan says. He doesn’t say that given Reid’s particular brain structure and drug history, it might be exacerbating his tendencies towards Stockholm Syndrome over the years. Jonathan has mixed feelings about it.

That’s not Jonathan’s primary concern, though, and Nefyn wisely steers them away. “Selina also texted that she’ll be here at one or so to help set up those booby traps we all discussed. What do you wanna do in the meantime, now that Crane’s hidden himself away? Understandably, I mean, poor guy’s got to be overwhelmed as hell, and to have a cold on top of it…”

“You like him.”

Nefyn plays with a lock of Jonathan’s hair flopped across his pillow. That’s allowed. The touching/no touching rules are well-established. “You know I like taking care of people. Plus he’s very appreciative.”

“And I’m not?” Because Jonathan really does appreciate Nefyn, it’s just that therapy has only done so much to restore Jonathan’s warmth.

“I know you are, it’s just really subtle most of the time.” Does Nefyn wistful about that? Or is he simply drowsy?

Maybe something can be done about that. Jonathan checks the clock on the wall. It uses elements on the periodic table instead of numbers - a gift from Ivy, whom he tutored in chemistry for her GED - but with his glasses off he has to go by approximate position of the hands. It’s only seven ten and he’s not hungry yet. “I wouldn’t mind starting off the day with you on top of me in a less violent capacity.”

“Do you really mean that?” Nefyn plays sub, or at least meek, about ninety percent of the time in his general sex life. Yet he gets a quiet yearning to pin Jonathan helplessly in place and sweetly have him more often than Jonathan is inclined to give up that much control. It’s not triggering as long as Nefyn doesn’t use any restraints other than his body and leverage. It’s a matter of vulnerability. Freefall.

His not-boyfriend looks and sounds so eager, though, and Jonathan’s been having to make a lot of heavy decisions lately and will have to make still more in the days to come. Jonathan gives him a reassuring half-smile. “I’ll let you know if I change my mind part way through, but yeah.”

***

Crane’s dreaming that he’s in a straitjacket and the (faintly amused) warden’s shoved him flat on a pool table with a hand tightly clamped over his mouth and nose. If he kicks or tries to bite, then a (decorative and from Wal-Mart, but it makes no difference) scarecrow’s going to spend a few hours in his cell with him. Strange is off to the side taking notes, a pool cue at the ready.

Then he wakes up. Turns out the “straitjacket” is him having tangled himself in the sheets, and the inability to breathe is from a vast quantity of mucus that somehow fits in his head before he finds a tissue to get rid of as much has he can. The nightmare has him in a bad temper, but Harley refuses to let him be alone for more than a few minutes at a time. She promises not to make him deal with Jonathan, though. Nefyn he can probably tolerate once the Dayquil’s kicked in and he’s had more rest.

Harley is almost unbearably kind, bringing him medicine (he dutifully swallows) and food (he barely touches) and drink (he gulps down greedily). She does suggest that he might be more susceptible to infections for awhile, having spent so much time in closed environments. He doesn’t mean to throw his cup after she says it. Thankfully it’s plastic and nearly empty. She puts some light reading within his reach, along with a blank, unlined notebook and some crayons. Nice, pricey crayons, not kid stuff. She then settles into the comfy chair and resumes reading a biography of the Unabomber.

 _Draw me again,_ hisses the voice in his ear.

Instead, he bites the inside of his cheek and draws what he can see of the view outside.

***

Jonathan pauses at the sound of the correctly arrhythmic knock on the door. He peeks through the peephole to verify the guest, then grabs the air-purifying respirator mask he keeps nearby, handing it to Selina Kyle the moment she enters.

“Really?” she asks, holding the mask like it’s a newly dead fish.

“Ever since the incident that made Cobblepot ban Scarecrow business from Nygma’s home lab, everyone but me has to wear a respirator when I’m working with the aerosolized fear serum. Even I wear a surgical mask during key moments.” He stands there with arms crossed until she straps it on. What with her black and leather ensemble, she looks seriously cyberpunk with it on.

“It’s been pimped out since the last time you let me in,” she notes, her voice muffled, as she follows him in.

“Well, yeah, if it’s gonna be my primary lab. Plus it’s easier to keep clean now that I don’t kill people in here anymore.” It still looks like its former alpaca barn self from the outside, but the inside gleams.

After his husband’s ultimatum, Nygma helped him acquire additional materials and equipment, and assigned one of his handier minions to install running water and insulation and the like. The minion didn’t know he was already slated for execution for repeatedly calling the Penguin various things, including “that crippled pansy”, when he thought nobody who cared was listening. Waste not want not. Once the upgrades were complete, the Scarecrow received permission to test a new formula on him. The Riddler waited long enough for him to return to his senses, then beat him to death with his question-mark cane _outside_ the lab. So it didn’t count.

“Is that a rat?” she asks as they near his main workstation.

“Every time I make a new set of weapons, I double-check to make sure I didn’t mix this up with a real helium canister and the active ingredients didn’t degrade. Might sound silly to you, but I think you understand my need to be careful.” It’s disguised on the off chance someone unauthorized ever finds it. He lightly taps the large, disguised metal cylinder where he stores big batches before filling up the various more portable containers Sick Crow carries.

(Jonathan makes, Sick Crow takes, Scarecrow breaks. Tidy.)

He still keeps rats in the shed, though they have nicer cages now, with wheels to keep them active and food and water dispensers he doesn’t have to replenish every day. Harley understands that his use of them reduces his need for human subjects, but she’s bothered enough that she insists on buying them toys for their enrichment. He incinerates them after they’re no longer useful and gives the ashes to Ivy, who swears that fertilizer made with them gives her various psychotropic flower nectars an added kick.

Selina pulls up a spare stool. “Stocking up on defenses, huh?”

“I’ve got some more fear grenade shells ready to fill up.” He points at the little heap of extra-strength mini balloons the gas and a single heavy ball bearing with each will go into. Next to them are plastic toy Pokeballs which will contain the balloons until he presses the button to crack them open and throws them hard enough for the ball bearing to burst the balloon. The ball bearings are now filed to have sharp angles. He’s painted the Pokeballs black to make them less adorable, and is careful to shop around and sometimes online under aliases. “But it can wait, if you have something more urgent.”

“I brought stuff to go _Home Alone_ on people’s asses. Knife Boy’s gonna pitch in on setup but he’s busy babysitting until Harley’s done taking a phone call from Penguin, because she knows better than to hang up on Goth Dad when he’s stressed out. That’ll take a few minutes. I also got Chinese takeout you guys can reheat for dinner, because Ivy can’t make it until tomorrow but she insists Harley’s gonna starve herself looking after you three ‘bishies’, whatever that is.”

Jonathan makes a mental note to text Nygma again. No replies so far today, must be sulking and driving his husband up the wall. “It’s short for _bishounen_. Basically Japanese for ‘pretty boy’. Ivy must have picked it up from Harley, who’s called me and Nefyn that. I won’t waste your time, then. Let’s go put the rat back with its pals and lay a bunch of trip wires. Or whatever. I assume it’s a skill from your squatting days?”

“Uh huh. And around our yard since Batman started nosing around the city. Do you really need to wear a lab coat when you’re tinkering away in here?” She takes off the respirator. He doesn’t try to stop her.

He sardonically brushes invisible dust off the lab coat’s collar. “Do you know anybody who doesn’t find props and costumes essential when getting stuff done? How often do you actually use that whip of yours?”

Her turn to snort. She takes three capped vials out of a pouch on the utility belt she uses pretty much whenever she leaves the home she shares with her girlfriend and her best friend. The fluid inside the vials is a sickly yellow. “I think this is what’s left of what the other guy made. We smashed and grabbed before Bridgit torched everything, but you said I should keep a lookout for it.”

  
“Yes. Thank you. I’ll put it in the safe. How much do I owe you?” He’s not asking about money. He’s in the small circle of people who pay Selina in favors, not cash.

She hands them over and gives him a little smirk. “You owe me an inconvenience, not a risk. There was a load of loot there for the other girls and me to repurpose or fence. Thistle took papers she said she’d hand over to the Reader in case there was something important. Said that was fine by you.”

“She was right.” As Jonathan puts everything away and they leave, Selina brings up various business matters, most of them expected. It’s only after he’s settled the rat back in and locked up the shed once more that she surprises him.

For one thing, she sounds almost nervous. “Hey, so, that clone of yours - I don’t want to sound paranoid, but make sure he’s not evil.’

“Do you have experience in that area?” Jonathan wouldn’t be that surprised. They live in Gotham.

She grimaces and leads the way to her car, which she’s parked neatly in his driveway. “Long time ago by now. Not my clone, but it was trouble. That’s all I’m saying. Does he get mysterious nosebleeds?”

“No.”

“Does he have the same memories you do, up to a point?”

“Yes.”

“Different model of clone, at least.” When she pops the trunk open, it reveals mouse traps, bear traps, rope, razor wire, kerosene, several rolls of duct tape, and a large cardboard box that says DO NOT SHAKE.

Jonathan reaches for the box and says dryly, “He hasn’t committed any unethical experimentation, first-degree murders, or acts of minor domestic terrorism. At least not yet. I won’t patronize him. Still, it makes more sense if _I’m_ the evil one.”

Selina rolls her eyes, but she jumps up and whirls around at the sound of approaching wheels. Then relaxes. “It’s Geek Uncle and Thistle.”

“You call him ‘Geek Uncle’?” Jonathan waves at them and the Casa del Zsasz apprentice cheerfully waves back. Reid raises a hand, but it’s not really a wave.

“He’s Green Dad’s cousin or long-lost-brother or something, obviously. Why’s he driving your car?”

“Returning it. Maybe he can help us with the traps.” He’s not allowed to tell Selina that the Reader has a doctorate in engineering, but his enthusiasm for all things low-tech yet geeky is as legendary as the Riddler’s.

***

Watching Nefyn sharpen his knives is hypnotic. Crane’s been watching since about five seconds in. His whetstone is small enough to fit in a loosely curled palm. “A sharp blade is kind as well as efficient,” Nefyn says at one point, but otherwise he seems as silently focused and meditative about it as he was chatty and nonchalant while dicing food yesterday.

Crane’s startled into a coughing and wheezing episode when there’s a sudden knock on the door. A soft male voice says, “I’m so sorry to barge in, but I’ve got information I think you’ll want to know right away.”

“Come in,” Crane says.

Reader has a folder clutched to his chest, and looks haunted with a five-o’clock shadow and dark circles under his eyes. His clothes are all gray and brown and rumpled. He gives Crane a faint but warm smile. “I heard you’re under the weather, but the symptoms Jonathan described really do sound just like a cold. Miserable as it is, most instances of the common cold clear up within a week. They have very little to do with physically being cold, incidentally…”

“Are you okay?” Nefyn asks.

“I didn’t really sleep last night. I’ve had coffee and Jonathan says I can crash on the sofa, don’t worry. I put the sleeplessness to good use. Crane, would you be comfortable being alone with me for this conversation? This is sensitive and you deserve control over who finds out and how much.”

Crane doesn’t consider Reader a threat to himself personally, and their interactions have been careful and gentle so far. So he nods and Nefyn gets up from the chair. He gives Crane a shoulder squeeze on the way out. It’s nice.

Reader sits next to Crane on the bed, though Crane is partly under the covers, and places the plain, closed folder on top of the bedspread. “As I said, I put my sleeplessness to good use. Thistle, who’s here too but can give you space if you need it, brought me various documents from the house where you were found. I’m still working on how to access Strange’s encrypted digital notes but took a crack at the new data. Most of it was irrelevant - a lot of it was junk mail? Anyway. But this -”

“Before you start, are you okay?”

Reader tilts his head, which makes him look very young, not much older than Nefyn. “I said I’m okay.”

Harley said this was a no-go zone, but this house is supposed to be safe, and what happened last night did not seem safe and needs to be made so. “The fight you had with your...you’re related to Edward Nygma, everyone says. Thinks. What was it about?”

“Crane…”

“Will he hurt you if you tell me?”

Reader takes in Crane’s facial expression. Body language. Labored congested breathing. Possibly soul. “Have people told you that Ed used to work with law enforcement?”

Crane nods and blows his nose.

“Jonathan knows, and you are arguably Jonathan, and I think this is about you feeling secure in this environment. Am I right? I’m trusting you here.”

Crane nods.

“I used to, as well. Elsewhere. Different capacity. He analyzed forensics. I analyzed criminal minds.”

“Cool.”

“Heh.” Reader stops, well, reading Crane, and stares out the window instead. “Ed’s transition into what he is now was more natural than mine. He wasn’t appreciated by his colleagues. The only one he could be said to still have any fondness for whatsoever is Dr. Thompkins, the medical examiner at the time he left, though after the birth of her daughter she started working part-time as a GP in a clinic instead. My colleagues, though, were very dear to me. And I to them. Most of them think I’m dead. Ed and I have an agreement that the woman you heard isn’t going to come to harm even though she knows the truth. Sometimes Ed gets overprotective. That’s all.”

That’s definitely not all, but it’s enough for now. “Okay. Thank you. I won’t share. Not even with Harley.”

“Not even with Harley, I’m afraid.” Reader taps the folder. “While I go over it, if you need to take a moment to process any of this -”

“Rip off the damn band-aid!” Crane snaps. Then claps a hand over his mouth.

“I’m not offended,” Reader reassures him. “The warden evidently gave them a simplified summary of some unusual things about your brain in case you ever had a seizure. Jonathan’s had what has been termed seizures, though they were more like sudden psychotic episodes that made him violently struggle in terror. Not true seizures.”

“I’ve never had seizures. Or not that I know of.” Indian Hill is a fuzzy mass of horror in his mind.

“It says you haven’t but are at risk. It says you take no medication, which is odd because Jonathan needs it and it’s taken years to get him as stable and low in side effects as he is now. It says that you were treated surgically, that you were given something kind of like a lobotomy but to your _temporal_ lobes, not _frontal_.” Reader pauses.

“Go on, please.” Crane settles against a propped-up-pillow, trying not to think about what that means, what that might have looked like.

“The temporal lobes have a major role in emotional regulation, including emotional response to objects, so the procedure was likely to limit your fear involving scarecrow imagery to something manageable. Also, schizophrenics have unusual temporal lobe activity, and some of yours and Jonathan’s symptoms resemble an artificially induced form of schizophrenia. As it says in the document, your temporal lobes couldn’t be altered too much without damaging your ability to recognize objects, understand speech, retain memories, etc. Your mood swings are likely not only from PTSD. You might literally have trouble with mood regulation, but that’s something that can be worked on. It’s amazing you’re doing as well as you are after something so irresponsible. Unconscionable.”

Crane starts shivering, even though he’s hot with a mild fever. “I wasn’t sure if it was a real memory, but, uh, I remember having very short hair at one point. Shaved. But then my hair grew and I wasn’t allowed scissors and nobody offered to cut it, and I felt like something, like I’d see something I didn’t want to see if it was ever short again.”

“When things are safer, I can pull some strings to get you a confidential MRI like I do with Jonathan from time to time. I know people. I’ve been working with him to build understanding of his brain…”

“I’m not okay,” Crane says with impressive calm, before abruptly wrapping his arms around Reader and pressing his face against his chest. With impressive lack of calm. “I’m not okay. I’m not okay and I’m never going to be okay and I’m never, I was just a toy to them, I was just a thing to poke at and make suffer and why didn’t they just kill me after? WHY?”

Reader cautiously wraps his arms around Crane in return, and rubs slow circles on his back with one hand. His voice is pitched lower, gentler. “I never formally studied neurology as such, but I spent decades trying to find a cure for schizophrenia, so I do know temporal lobes.”

Crane is having trouble breathing for more than one reason now, but he manages a less frantic, “Why?”

“My mother was schizophrenic. It was terrible watching the toll it took on her. You know what? She was still the best person I have ever known. She was strong, and loving, and wise, and even when she didn’t fully know what was going on and needed help taking care of herself, she had her days of joy and peace, and she was valued, and I miss her every day, I still wri - I still miss her, Jonathan Crane. Because you are Jonathan Crane, every bit as much as the young man downstairs is. Whatever you’re fighting inside, whatever’s been done to you? It doesn’t determine who you have to be.”

“I’m going to cry.”

“Then do.”

It’s nice not to be punished or mocked for crying, and even more not to be pushed away. Reader actually starts quoting Byron at him, which has got to be part of his shtick. Better than a riddle at a time like this. _This should have been a noble creature: he hath all the energy which would have made a goodly frame of glorious elements…_

Crane wakes up with Reader still next to him, eating Chinese takeaway with a fork. He offers an open box of beef and broccoli stir fry and rice that already has a pair of unwrapped chopsticks stuck in it. The clock says only slept for twenty minutes.

“Can’t eat with chopsticks?” he croaks, realizing he actually is hungry and snatching the food. It was their favorite dish from their favorite cheap Chinese restaurant in all of Gotham. Nowhere near this house, very close to where they grew up.

Reader chuckles ruefully. “Never got the hang of it.”

“It’s comforting to have something I can do that someone else in the room can’t.” Crane delicately picks out a morsel with his utensils like his namesake would with a beak.

(He notices that Reader has an almost-hidden hickey when he adjusts his shirt, and doesn't say anything. Good for him. Guy deserves it. He hopes the lady/guy/whoever is nice.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reid's canonical inability to eat with chopsticks, and his frustration when everyone else on the team totally can, is so cinnamon roll that I had to bring it up. In this chapter, he almost admits that he still writes her a letter every day, since in canon he writes her one every day, and in "Inches and Miles" I had him continue to write them while she was alive but he was forbidden to contact her. By this point it's his standard journal format.


	6. Two for Joy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter contains a very brief reference to suicidal ideation.

Crane cracks one eye open as he hears Harley moving around the guest room. “I dreamed you were fighting evil alongside Will Smith and armed only with an baseball bat,” he says.

She laughs. “I did play softball as a kid, but I think that’s a stretch? How are you feeling?”

“Stuffy but clearer, I think? I hope?” He gropes for a tissue and blows his nose.

“Ivy’s visiting later, and if you don’t mind seeing her she’s probably going to have a bunch of wacky herbal remedies to try? Nothing extreme or that’ll clash with the FDA-approved drugs, she promises.” Harley’s wearing black cutoff jeans as shorts, cropped just above the knee, and her t-shirt says “You’re Assuming I’m the Princess, Not the Dragon”. With a picture of a pretty dragon.

He’s definitely interested in seeing the young woman who’s been so relaxed about Harley’s coziness with him. Also she has superpowers of some kind. He’s not so jaded as to not find that exciting. Climbing out of bed, he answers, “Okay. Is Reader still in the house?”

“He’s downstairs with Jonathan and Thistle having breakfast.” Harley’s found the hair brush she must have been looking for and starts using it on the mild tangle she’s developed. “Reader slept on the pull-out couch, which is quite comfortable actually. Thistle sleeps about eight hours out of every seventy-two, and they don’t have to be consecutive, so she ran back to Reader’s house and drove his car back here, since he came in Jonathan’s care yesterday.”

Picking out clothes for the day buys Crane some processing time. “Is Thistle one of the Zsaszettes Nefyn’s sleeping with?”

“No, they’re just friends, and Thistle’s just the house apprentice. He recruited her to be his replacement when he ‘graduated’. Jonathan drew me a diagram of Nefyn’s polyamory one time, with explanatory annotations? Pretty sure Jonathan’s the only one Nefyn’s in love with, though, regardless of Jonathan’s emotional eh-ness. Thistle’s dating an assassin who’s allied with Zsasz and used to rent a room in the house, but I don’t know about anything else she might be doing?”

“ _Anyone_ else she might be doing, rather,” Crane says.

She grins. “You made a joke.”

“Let’s see how much I can keep it up.” He hugs the assembled outfit to his chest so he can take it to the bathroom with him for after his shower. He feels like he’s coated in a thin film of grease. “Anything else I should know about Thistle? She’s the one who figured out I was in Indian Hill, right? Is she...different? Other than the lack of sleeping much?”

“I think that’s her story to explain how and why, but yes. I’ll wait here and we can go downstairs together when you’re ready, k?”

When they get to the dining room, the unfamiliar guest who has to be Thistle is eating a stack of pancakes while watching Reader talk. Not just listening, watching, dark eyes on every gesture. The ambiguously brownish-olive skin on her face is smooth, but her rolled-up lavender seersucker shirt sleeves reveal tiny green prickles dotting every bit of her forearms and the backs of her hands. She also has visible prickles on the back of her neck where her short black hair comes to a stop. The brown tank top under the unbuttoned shirt is textured with the ones on her stomach. Presumably her bra is covering the ones on her chest.

Reader is gesturing with his fork as he continues, “...which brings up the interesting point of whether it counts as possessing theory of mind if you can imagine another’s state of mind well enough to deceive. In some species of cuttlefish, smaller, weaker males have been observed pretending to be female in order to sneak past a larger male’s territorial defenses and mate with the other male’s mates behind his back. This is an advantage for the females, actually…”

“Because that way she gets to be with both the big and strong one and the clever pretty one,” Thistle says. She points at his mostly-full plate. “Eat your food, professor.”

“Yes’m.”

Jonathan’s working on a far smaller portion, and he has a carefully dissected but not yet eaten orange on a separate plate. He beckons Harley and Crane. “With the knowledge that nobody is allergic and under the assumption that Crane’s palate is by default mine, Thistle made peanut butter and banana pancakes. There’s also toast.”

“I made bread, too,” Thistle says. “I like working with flour. And I got bored. Should I shake hands with you, Crane? Jonathan doesn’t like shaking hands, but I know that’s the, like, standard thing.”

Instead, Crane waves timidly at her, and she waves back. He takes a seat, and she gets up and puts food in front of him. Smaller portions than the one she’s giving Harley. He’s grateful for that as well.

Once he’s supplied to her satisfaction, she sits back down and says, “To answer your unspoken question, Strange brought be back to life using some sort of elixir that involved thistle milk. Reader estimates the quantities as ‘hella’.”

“I did not use the word ‘hella’,” Reader says, but he’s obviously suppressing a smile. “I also said that it made no sense, even given my limited data.”

“I have amnesia,” she adds matter-of-factly, stirring her tea. “My literal first memories are of Indian Hill, so if you want to talk about it…”

Crane takes a sip of the drink in front of him. Turns out it’s hot chocolate with a shot of mint syrup. “Not now. What does that have to do with not sleeping?”

She goes on about how extract from the milk thistle can be used as part of treatment for liver failure from eating certain mushroom species, and she seems to have a super-liver now, which given how many hundreds of functions the liver has…

“...Including energy levels and physical endurance,” she concludes. She shrugs and gives a wry smile. “For the low, low price of not remembering anything from my previous life, and needing to do a lot of shaving with a straight razor.”

“Do they grow on your face, too?” Crane asks.

“Yes. It’s such work keeping up with them that I mostly just shave my face, neck, and...strategic places. Ivy’s asked for some of the shavings for study.”

Harley licks syrup from the corner of her mouth and Crane forgets to chew for a second. Jonathan briefly raises his eyebrows at him in what he hopes is sympathy. “Speaking of Ivy, she wants this to be more of a 'look after Crane’ day for her rather than 'discuss taking down our enemies’ day, especially since her mind-control perfume stock is low and she’ll be of limited use…”

“Wow,” Crane mumbles at the concept of mind-control anything, before sneezing several times. Thistle hands him a tissue.

“If it's cool with the JC's, Ivy wants to stay overnight and take me and Arlecchino - that’s my Vespa, Crane - to her, Selina, and Bridgit’s house in the morning. Penguin wants me to do a job on Friday night with Selina as backup. We need to plan.” She sounds excited, but also a little nervous.

Crane feels the world tip underneath him. “Is it a dangerous job?”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” Harley says, but the sound is distant in his ears and he is not himself, watching life through a thick glass wall, and he does not know where his limbs are, where any of him is.

He finds himself sitting outside on the front stoop of the house, taking shuddering breaths and wiping his nose on his sleeve. The door opens and Thistle plops beside him. She hands him another tissue. He doesn’t know where the first one went.

After a silence, she says, “The first few weeks I knew Nefyn, I followed him around like a duckling. He ended up canceling a lot of plans so I could. I didn’t have a crush on him - he’s the first person I can remember hugging me. Maybe someone hugged me before I woke up all thorny, escaped, then spent two years homeless on my own kicking the asses of anyone who tried to mess with me, but how much do things matter if you don’t remember them? You know? And the first time he went out on a job I panicked and cried. Dr. Kali ended up teaching me how to do CPR on a dummy to keep me occupied. How you can hum ‘Staying Alive’ to help you keep the beat right.”

Crane blows his nose again. “Not the chorus, I hope. _Stayin’ al-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ve._ "

Thistle giggles and slings an arm around his shoulders. She’s rolled her sleeves down. “Mr. Zsasz prefers ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ for the same thing.”

“I never thought of assassins learning CPR.” The sun is so bright out here. He wonders when he’ll ever get used to it again.

“Assassins love people too.” She shrugs her free shoulder. “Besides, sometimes we do more security and bodyguarding stuff. That’s what Teeth wants to start specializing in, once he wraps up his last few contracts. I’m going to start looking for my replacement in a few months and he and I are going to try to start a little business partnership that’s less about killing and more about protecting. I don’t judge the others. It’s...I’ve started to feel like it’s less my thing, that’s all. And the hit-person field is crowded here in Gotham. The skillset is similar. Just because the person who rescued me from a bad situation lives a certain way means I have to do exactly what he does. You know?”

“Yeah.” He knows what she means underneath the surface.

Thistle hands him a canvas sack that matches the one that’d been hidden on the other side of her. “Let me teach you what wild plants around here are edible. It’s something I just know. We have no idea why, just like we don’t know how I knew hand-to-hand combat. I’ve even taught Ivy a few foraging tips - her expertise when it comes to wild plants is more for supervillainy.”

He eyes the sack dubiously. “Didn’t you die from wild mushrooms?”

“Mushrooms aren’t plants, sweetie. We’ll cook everything and feed them to one of Jonathan’s lab rats if that makes you feel better.” She sticks her tongue out and dashes barefoot towards a big patch of clover. He follows her, still dubiously, but when she makes sure he hydrates an hour later he realizes he’s made quite a haul of greens. He’s forgotten himself in a much better way.

***

After Thistle goes to calm Crane, Harley announces she’ll strip the guest bed and wash the linens, and Jonathan and Reid clean up the dining room and kitchen. Thistle is a fairly good but untidy cook.

Reid’s watching Thistle and Crane out the window as he washes the dishes by hand. Jonathan’s never seen the need to install a dishwasher, seeing as he lives alone and normally has one guest at most.

Jonathan’s not sure how much time they have before someone joins them. He asks quietly, “Does Teeth know?”

Reid pauses mid-scrub. “Know what?”

“It isn’t going to go well for you if he doesn’t, because he’ll find out one day, and we like you in one piece.”

“Ah.” Reid takes a deep breath. “Yes. It’s all been negotiated. But I don’t want Ed to know. Or many people in general. I’ve always been circumspect about these matters.”

There’s something painful there, but Jonathan’s brain keeps his sense of it safely far down and away. “That makes sense. I won’t say anything. It’s not that obvious, I’m just hyper-aware of everything right now.”

“Thank you.”

Odd as their relationship is, Jonathan does consider Reid a friend now, so he adds, “Be more careful about marks in summer when you can’t wear scarves.”

It’s a credit to Reid’s poker face that the only reaction is the slightest upturn of his collar. Though he forgot to dry his hand first, so his shirt collar has a damp spot.

When Thistle bustles Crane back in, she asks Reid to tell her more about theory of mind and animals being clever. Reid lights up and starts talking about corvids “so everyone can enjoy”.

***

Ivy arrives in a cute compact green pickup truck, the better to haul plants in. Crane is surprised to see that she looks more Reid’s age than Harley’s, but holds back the question as he watches a far more surprising sight. Ivy parks her car next to Harley’s little red Vespa. When she gets out, she takes seeds from a pouch on the small brown canvas belt clasping the waist of her green and white floral sundress. She sprinkles them on the ground and adds some water from the bottle Harley hands to her. And crouches down to put her hand flat on top.

Vines shoot upwards and wrap themselves around Arlecchino. Ivy stands but keeps physical contact with at least one part of one plant at all times. The vines, which look like the non-poison ivy that use to cover part of Jonathan Crane’s old roof before the fire, physically lift the vehicle and gently place it sideways on the bed of the truck. Harley applauds and gets to work strapping it down. Jonathan helps.

“Showoff,” Thistle says cheerfully.

“It’s good to practice,” Ivy replies, just as cheerfully.

“Mm, I bet Harley helps you practice wrapping vines around things a lot.”

Reader actually laughs, even if it’s brief. It's a nice laugh. Crane doesn't get it. 

Ivy lets go of the vines and turns to face Crane. “One of the people from Indian Hill could quickly age living things by touching them, and tried to kill me that way, but I escaped after he only did, like, ten-ish years? But less than a year ago Nygma figured out how to help me use the residual growth-i-ness inside me and combine it with my closeness to plants.” She touches the vines again and agees them to death.

“That’s how he killed Peabody,” Thistle adds.

Crane’s eyes widen. “I hope it really hurt.” He only has the vaguest half-memories of Peabody, but they fill him with loathing.

“Oh, it hurt,” Ivy says with a shiver.

“I didn’t mean it like...uh...I...sorry…

“You are precious! Can I hug you?”

“Okay?”

Then she launches herself at him and wraps her arms around him tightly. She smells nice. Like someone who Harley loves should smell. Floral, but also like rich soil and mown grass. He knows the lovely smell of mown grass is actually the grass screaming for help, which is appropriate, really. “I brought, like, oregano oil, and tea, and aromatherapy stuff, and, and, oh god you’re so much cuter than Crow Bro and I am going to cuddle you and make you well.”

“Does that mean you think I’m in any way slightly cute?” Jonathan asks, sounding like he’s purely seeking information.

She releases Crane long enough to flip Jonathan off. With a grin.

***

Ivy and Harley get into a debate about how much is too much dosing Crane with herbal remedies and fussing over him. He ends up trying some remedies, then letting them wrap him in a blanket and prop him between them on the still-pulled-out couch as they watch some sci-fi that isn’t too heavy.

“Most of this show is heavy, but this standalone episode is lovely,” Harley promises when it comes to the second program.

“And queeeeeeeer,” Ivy proclaims, waving both hands in the air.

Afterwards the girls get into a debate about whether an uploaded version of your consciousness and memories into a device really counts as ‘you’. Crane does not like this argument and asks if they can watch _Mystery Science Theater 3000_ making fun of bad horror movies. They do. Crane doesn’t laugh that much, but he smiles.

His cold is feeling better by dinnertime. Harley argues that a lot of it must be placebo effect. Ivy strokes her girlfriend’s cheek and suggests they get the Virginia creeper out when they get home, which makes Harley blush.

Ohhhhhh. This time around, Crane gets it.

Dinner includes Thistle and Crane’s greens. Crane doesn’t eat that much but what he does eat is agreeable.

***

Jonathan spends most of his day discussing the foiling of enemies and the long-term destiny of his clone with Reid and Thistle. When it comes to the second, Thistle’s experience has useful parallels.

He does check on Crane at one point to see that Ivy is telling Crane stories while he’s got his head in Harley’s lap, and it’s a surreal sight to see his own face as part of that tableau, but reassuring.

Then Ivy squeals from the guest bedroom and everyone comes running. Even Crane, who starts coughing and wheezing and has to sit down from the effort.

She’s holding a notebook of unlined paper open in her hands. “Sorry to startle all of you! I was making myself at home in here, like you do, and I found this. Did you do this, Crane?”

Crane nods warily.

“They’re amazing! The landscape outside the window, the one of Harley reading in her chair, Jonathan feeding a crow that’s perched on him…”

The sketches are in Jonathan’s much-neglected high-quality crayon set. There’s also Reid watching the fireflies, Nygma taking all the batteries out of the portable radio, Harley sleeping in the sleeping bag, Kali taking items out of her black doctor’s bag, and a quick monochrome doodle of the outside of the house. All of them are better than anything Jonathan’s ever drawn, though some of the stuff he made back when he did art therapy was decent.

He wonders if anyone else has noticed that the drawing of Jonathan has him feeding a crow, but his shadow is an outline of the Scarecrow. Their Scarecrow.

“They really are good,” he says. “She’s not just being gushy.”

Crane rubs the back of his neck self-consciously. “Sometimes...I’d have paper and crayons. Or markers. Or bit of charcoal or chalk on the floor if I wanted to do something bigger, if I promised to wash it off after. When I was in the middle of drawing I could tune out everything else. Be at peace for a moment. So I did it as much as possible. Some days it was mostly scarecrows, but other days I could draw other things.”

“Picasso said, _Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life_ ,” Reid offers.

“Can you draw me?” Ivy asks.

“Uh…”

“You don’t have to,” Harley says.

Crane takes the book and picks up the crayons.  “I’ll try.”

***

“Sorry you’re stuck with me as a roommate tonight,” Jonathan says when he enters his bedroom. Crane is already snuggled in deep. He’s glad his double is almost as easily chilled as he is.

“It’s fair for Ivy and Harley to get that room,” he says. Reader’s gone home and Thistle isn’t sleeping tonight, though she make take a two-hour nap tomorrow afternoon. He sees how this would lend herself to doing well as a guard/bodyguard.

“That’s not what I mean.”

Crane sighs. “You’ve been nothing but helpful to me. It’s just…”

“I get it. And I know you have the opposite problem I do. Too many emotions vs. too few.” The bed dips as he climbs into his side of the bed and there’s a click as he turns off the lamp.

“I’ve wanted someone to kill me, or to kill myself, a bunch of times,” Crane tells the darkness softly.

Jonathan is blessedly unperturbed. “I figure. And I’m you, but lucky.”

“Yeah.” Maybe it’s that simple. “But I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful.”

“I don’t. We’re not naturals at handling handouts, but we feel grateful.”

Despite the good day it’s been, the best day he’s had in years, Crane can’t sleep. He tosses and turns as quietly as he can. Then there’s movement from the other side and the brief glow of a screen. Jonathan sounds drowsy but clear. “I made an insomnia mix a while back.”

Crane falls asleep soon after the most relatable pair of lines.

_And all I ever wanted was a sliver to call mine._

_And all I ever wanted was a shimmer in your shine._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song is "Make Me Better" by The Decemberists.
> 
> The thing about Virginia creeper/practicing wrapping vines around things is a reference to the next story in this series, a sexy PWP called, you guessed it, "Virginia Creeper".


	7. Three for Girls and Four for Boys

The following day, Crane’s fourth since rescue, is more of a mixed bag for him. On the one hand, Harley and Ivy leave after breakfast and after many a hug.  He spends the next few hours painfully worried about Harley, whose mission nobody’s allowed to discuss with him until after it’s over. If then. Also, he has a combination flashback/Scarecrow Moment shortly after lunch and only manages to vomit in the downstairs bathroom sink, not having enough warning to get it in the toilet. He’s embarrassed and insists on cleaning it up himself. Jonathan calmly provides him with a rehydration drink afterwards. Thistle gives him a hug and whispers that he’s going to get better.

On the other hand, Crane’s cold seems to have cleared up and the tea Ivy left him has flower petals in it and is good with honey. Jonathan relays Kali’s confirmation that Crane’s medical tests have turned up clean. She doesn’t have the equipment to do tests like that in her home lab and had been waiting for a friend to secretly carry them out for her. In celebration, Thistle takes Crane to the creek and teaches him how to fold little round floats out of leaves to send away on the water. Jonathan reads while sitting in a tree - since he’s still not allowed to be home alone - and then Ivy poses for a few of Crane’s pencil sketches and says she loves them.

Best of all, a thunderstorm hits late that afternoon.

“I love thunderstorms,” Crane explains. “If they were loud enough I could hear them inside Arkham, and they reminded me there was still a world outside my frosted window that let some sunlight in but didn’t show me a view. That there was more than this.”

There are movies that night, and kettle corn in addition to regular popcorn.

“What are you going to do with me?” Crane whispers to Jonathan as they’re falling asleep. He’s still not allowed to be alone anywhere except the bathroom. He’s not sure he wants to be. He hasn’t wanted to hurt Jonathan today, and that’s good. He doesn’t want to want to hurt him.

“You make it sound like it’s entirely up to me,” Jonathan says.

***

It’s the fifth day since Crane’s rescue and both of them are getting some of the therapy they desperately need. Though Nygma would still prefer Jonathan stay put, Reader apparently convinces him to let Jonathan keep his regular therapy appointment. Nefyn, who has a few cuts and bruises from the Job but is otherwise fine, is his escort. The cops don’t have any proof that Nefyn Pontiac and Knifepoint the “Zsaszeur” are the same person. Jonathan doesn’t tell his therapist the whole truth, for safety, but he discusses getting in touch with a relative he hasn’t seen in years and it having churned up some issues.

“He makes me think of who I used to be, and I find myself caring what he thinks of me now. I also find myself worrying about him. He’s had an incredibly harsh time of it. I’ve been acting normally, even to myself, but I have this undercurrent of freaking out now. He’s ill and fragile needs help figuring out a new place to live and, like, a job and stuff, and I’m thinking I don’t know, I don’t goddamn know.”

Helga Keillor used to take notes when Jonathan talked to her, but since he came out to her as a former serial killer (for science) and continuing chess piece in the Penguin-Riddler crime empire, she hasn’t been allowed to do that. Nygma’s chat with her was cordial but firm. It’s a testament to the strength of her character that after a brief adjustment she’s treated Jonathan exactly the same as before. So instead of writing any of that down, she taps her chin thoughtfully.

“Do you realize that this, too, is behaving normally? For people in general? Regardless of what you’ve done, Jonathan, you and I know you’ve never truly been a sociopath.”

Jonathan groans. “If this is normal, I don’t like it.”

***

Meanwhile, Harley’s friend and Selina’s girlfriend Bridgit Pike comes to visit. He tries not to gape at the odd, rough texture of her dark skin, the melted-on fireproofing that Strange found so fascinating. He focuses on her flamethrower that she’s casually toting around, because damn.

“Not just here to help guard you while Knife Boy and Crow Bro are gone,” she says after a handshake. “If you want, maybe you and Thistle and I could talk about it.”

“About what?” Crane asks, glancing at Thistle, who’s perched on the back of the sofa and looking grave despite kicking her feet.

“What we all have in common,” Bridgit says, cocking her head.

Crane gulps and nods. They end up at the kitchen table in three out of its four rough-hewn chairs, with cups of tea brewed from one of Ivy’s gift bags. A calming brew, supposedly. Bridgit says Ivy makes it for her when Bridgit dreams of her late brothers before she burned them to death. Well-deserved, according to the scraps Crane has picked up.

“I’ll start if you guys are still collecting yourselves,” Bridgit says. “Also I’m stirring my hot drink with my heatproof finger to show off to Crane, no need to ask.”

Thistle giggles at that before going back to grave-faced.

“There was a lot of pain. Even in regular hospitals and under normal circumstances, burns that almost kill you are mofos to heal from. But Strange wanted me to forget who I was, too, so I could be programmed how I wanted. So while I was still recovering…” She looks at her tea more than the others from then on. Thistle calls a time-out at one point and gets a box of tissues.

“Are you, like, the standard tissue lady?” Crane jokes shakily, given yesterday. Thistle shrugs.

When it’s Thistle’s turn, she begins with, “I shrieked the first time I saw my skin, but what was worse when I asked where I was, what I’d done to get here, WHO I WAS and got told to be quiet until someone told me to speak. Then after each day of testing there’d be lights-out and I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I wouldn’t be tired. I was afraid to tell them - him - because that would be interesting, another thing to test, and I didn’t like the tests.”

When it’s Crane’s turn, he rubs his face with his hands and says, “I have trouble picking out anything concrete, I’m sorry. I remember bright lights and being strapped to things, being asked stuff about my past. I was examined naked sometimes.”

“Hashtag me too,” Thistle says. Crane and Bridgit both stare at her. “Never mind.”

Crane manages to summon up another detail. “It smelled like at the dentist. My head hurt a lot. Sorry.”

Bridgit scoffs. “You don’t need to be sorry. You’re not doing us a favor, we’re just griping like Thistle and me have done.”

“Griping?” Thistle asks, a twist to her mouth.

“Bitching?”

Crane abruptly starts crying, dammit, and the girls spend several minutes convincing him not to try to stop.

***

Bridgit leaves in the middle of the night because she gets a call from Selina saying she and Harley need her and Ivy for backup. Crane hasn’t been told that Harley is doing another infiltration of the Joker cult to find out what they’re planning next. Her first two were successful, unlike everyone else Cobblepot has ever sent in. Something must be going down. Jonathan is slightly tense about it, himself. If Crane knew the full context he’d flip. As it is, when the commotion is over, Jonathan sees him sucking his thumb again in his sleep.

On the sixth day since Crane’s rescue, Harley finishes her mission successfully but needs some quiet self-care time with Ivy. She talks to Crane on the phone and he perks up. Crane goes for a walk, reads a book, draws some more, and bakes cookies with Thistle.

Meanwhile, Jonathan spends the day feeling vaguely listless, nothing so extreme as depressed. He practices more tree climbing, feeds the crows, and later takes a long nap that Nefyn agreeably wakes him from. He channel surfs. He cleans up after Crane and Thistle’s cookie adventure.

Neither of them are doing great at dinner. Crane is listlessly playing with his food and Jonathan is cutting his entree into equally sized morsels while Nefyn and Thistle valiantly try to carry on a friendly conversation for the others to jump into.

Then Crane says, “I want to go to Mom and Dad’s graves.”

“We’ll do it as soon as we get the all clear,” Jonathan replies.

“I never got to see Dad’s grave.”

“That’s a place our enemies would expect you to want to go.”

Crane crosses his arms. “I appreciate how comfortable and how frequently visited _this_ prison you’ve transferred me to is, but…”

“That’s not fair,” Thistle says with a frown.

“I just want to go for a few minutes. The two of you could protect us, right? Both trained by the legendary Zsasz and his crew?”

“We’ve done a few sweeps of that cemetery, actually,” Nefyn says. “Never found any sort of stakeout.”

Jonathan kicks Nefyn under the table. Nefyn somehow manages to leg-lock that leg of Jonathan’s using his own leg so that, without hurting Jonathan in the slightest, he’s made him unable to kick him again.

“Someone would have to stay at the house. If we came back and there was someone lying in wait, you know? Plus there’s all the dangerous and incriminating stuff you keep in the barn.” Thistle sounds miserable, and because Nefyn doesn’t like Thistle sounding miserable and Jonathan doesn’t like Nefyn not liking things, Jonathan doesn’t like it either. A=B=C means A=C, after all.

Crane is now actively trembling. “Please. You got closure, I never got it. And I haven’t seen Mom’s grave in four years of consciousness, if you discount the delirium and the freezing. I don’t even have to put flowers on either of them. I just want - please, please, please, nobody’s ever let me choose a destination for so long. I like you all but I’m getting stir crazy. Aren’t you, Jonathan? Be honest.”

“How about when we have more backup?” Nefyn says gently, reaching to take Crane’s hand. “It’s a busy night for pretty much everyone I know, but I could get in touch with -”

Crane slams his fists on the table. “No! I want to go now!"

The Scarecrow puts a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. He knows without looking by the texture and crackle of it, by the doom at the pit of his stomach. _I’m looking forward to when he really becomes me, the way you’ve always chickened out of. Disorganized, isn’t that the term? One little push, just a little more grief, and he can be me as much as I want._

 _You belong to us now, not us to you, you raggedy strawfuck_. Jonathan balls his hands into fists and stands up. “Nefyn, I trust you can take care of us for less than ten minutes in a cemetery. Let’s go.”

***

Nefyn is driving his car, on the off-chance someone who shouldn’t would recognize Jonathan’s. He and Jonathan are silent up front. Jonathan swapped out his glasses for contacts, which aren't comfortable for him but are less likely to be lost in a mad dash away from enemies. Crane is in the backseat. The Scarecrow sits beside him, but not scaring him. Just sitting. Looking out the window. It’s the weirdest thing, and so much less intense than his near-unbearable sudden craving to see those graves.

 _Moonless night,_ it growls just before vanishing.

***

They take an indirect route for safety, and the cemetery is on the other side of Gotham anyway. The cemetery is closed and the gates are locked by now. All three of them know how to pick locks, but the lockpick set belongs to Nefyn so he’s the one who gets the gate open for them. He closes it behind them to make it less obvious that they’re there, and he stays near the gate to keep an eye on it. Fortunately he can still see the other two from there.

Mom’s gravestone, just as Crane remembers, says: _‘Tis a fearful thing, to love what death can touch._ Dad’s says: _Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing._

“There’s flowers on Mom’s but not on Dad’s,” Crane observes, leaning forward to trace the words “the fear has gone”.

Jonathan kneels to brush some dead leaves off the realistic white plastic carnations he’s placed in the sunken hollow carved for the purpose. He leaves real ones on special occasions. Her brother leaves orchids the rare times he passes through Gotham. “You sound surprised.”

“His plans didn’t turn out well, but he loved us. And he had a vision for the world, not just for us.”

Something about Crane’s tone rubs him the wrong way, and Jonathan’s reply is colder than usual.  “The vision is a discussion for later. Love? Love is when you accept people for who they are, not try to cure them of a natural human emotion because of their own regrets.”

Crane laughed. “Ah yes, like Nygma has always accepted the Reader of who he is and doesn’t treat him badly at all.”

Jonathan freezes. He takes a deep breath. “Reader told me about your temporal lobe surgery, so I’m not going to hold that against you or tell either of them you said that.”

“Don’t fucking patronize me. I am literally exactly you if you’d been through what I have.”

“Whatever you say,” Jonathan says, straightening up to dust off his hands.

Crane shoves him. “React.”

Jonathan holds up his hands placatingly. “You’re having a mood swing.”

“I’m the one who was practically buried alive, but you’re the one who’s dead inside.” Crane’s panting now and red in the face while simultaneously looking like he’s about to crumple into pieces.

“I cared enough to dig you out,” Jonathan says. “You claimed to be grateful.”

“I’m sick of being grateful for receiving basic decency.” Crane starts turning away, but then he swirls around again. “How many people have you murdered? Not accidents like Grandma or helping cover up for Dad, but actual murder?”

“Why?” Jonathan doesn’t ask how Crane knows Jonathan’s a murderer. There are a lot of clues.

“Because I’ve been punished so much more for so much less than you’ve ever done! Because I’m not allowed to hate you because I’m grateful, and I hate THAT! Because the only people who care about me now care about me because of you, and the last person who cared about me was dad and you don’t care about him!” Crane’s stepped closer now, rather than farther away.

Jonathan looks Crane in the eye and says, “If he came back to life right this second I would kill him all over again.”

Crane tackles him to the ground and punches him in the face. It turns into an odd brawl where Crane is trying to beat Jonathan up, Jonathan is trying to incapacitate him without hurting him, and neither of them have any level of brawn whatsoever and is extremely close to resorting to hair-pulling.

Then Jonathan realizes something. He hisses, “Stop. Run and hide.” And promptly does without trying to convince Crane any further, because there’s no time. He hopes Crane puts aside the petty scuffle and trusts him.

If Nefyn’s watching them, why didn’t he try to break up the fight?

***

Jonathan runs away and Crane slumps on the ground for a second trying to get his breath back. He feels cold, confused, and ashamed at what just came over him. At least he didn’t seriously hurt Jonathan. Like, it didn’t enter into his mind to use Jonathan’s own crow-beak dagger even as it dangled right in reach.

Then an arm abruptly snakes around his torso and there’s a gun pressed to the underside of his chin. A murmur in his ear. “Not a word unless we say so.”

***

Jonathan finds cover behind a large tombstone. He takes his phone out and sends out a mass text: TROUBLE NEAR PARENTS GRAVES HELP. He can send something with more detail and better punctuation if he gets the chance.

Crane shouts, “I-I’ve tripped and  broken my ankle, I need your help!”

Jonathan finds this suspicious and doesn't reply and reveal his position.

After a long silence, an unfamiliar voice yells, “Get over here, hands up,  and we’ll let your boyfriend go.” There’s a scream, and one of the benefits of Nefyn having a masochistic streak is that Jonathan can immediately recognize the sound of him in pain. Them having Nefyn is genuine. Their willingness to let him go is highly suspect.

After a moment to collect himself, Jonathan undoes the leather cord of the beautiful gift Nefyn gave him. He carefully puts the obsidian shard in his mouth.

The people who’ve caught Nefyn, and presumably forced Crane to try to trick Jonathan, are shining a light for Jonathan to walk towards. When he gets close enough, he sees that Nefyn’s facedown on the ground with his hands on his head. There are four men in total, one keeping hold of Crane, one focused on Jonathan, one getting a sedative ready for Crane the moment Crane isn’t needed conscious, and only one covering Nefyn. Idiots. They must not know what he is.

So the moment he gets close enough, Jonathan pulls the thumb-sized moderately sharp blade from his mouth again and lunges towards the one keeping Nefyn down. And shrieks, “ _Distraction!_ ”

Jonathan is stopped and wrestled into submission almost immediately, but what matters is that Nefyn takes full advantage. In the startled split second of the man focusing on Jonathan instead of him, Nefyn bucks and rolls over, stabbing him in the leg. He quickly takes one of his several other knives and stabs him in the gut, too. Then he flees.

Jonathan feels a tinge of satisfaction even as the needle sinks into his neck and the sedative sinks into his system.

***

**_Years ago:_ **

_“Again. If you’re ever separated from your guardians, what will you do?”_

_“I...I’ll go to my parents’ graves.”_

_“When?”_

_“The first moonless night. After the gates are locked.”_

_“And then?”_

_“Make a scene so I'm easy to find. Are you going to, um, shock me again? Do you, do, uh, do you really have to?”_

_“Permanent subconscious command implementation is neither a quick, nor an easy undertaking. This is necessity, not punishment. You're doing well. You won't remember any of this unpleasantness. Just a few more times.”_

_“Yes, Dr. Strange.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After this, we're going to get some other POVs as well, though there will still be plenty from the two JCs.


	8. Five for Silver and Six for Gold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New characters and new POVs, yay!
> 
> This chapter has some references to an earlier one-shot from Penelope Garcia's point of view, [Depths and Fathoms](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11811399). It's not necessary to understand this chapter, but you may get additional emotional resonance if you've read it first, especially if you're not familiar with Criminal Minds.

Penelope Garcia yawns as she pads towards the kitchen. She needs a cup of coffee before she faces complicated matters like changing into grown-up clothes.

Then she screams. Because the murderous Victor Zsasz that she knows from research is leaning against her kitchen counter drinking her special Belgian dark chocolate whole milk that she’s been rationing the deliciousness of. Garcia more or less looks up bad people, or their victims, for a living, and digs up everything she can to support her team out in the field. She doesn’t remember everything from every case, but anything related to Reid is special.

Therefore, she is certain she is about to die. Edward Nygma warned her to stop trying to contact Reid, and he’s caught her trying to contact Reid, and so he’s sent his and his husband’s very top enforcer. Zsasz is going to kill her and he’s going to carve a tally mark in his SKIN to COMMEMORATE IT and her death will be ON HIM and she’s in TARDIS SLIPPERS and…

“Relax! I’m just here to abduct you,” Zsasz says genially before knocking back the rest of the glass he’s poured himself.

“What?” Her phone’s still charging and her walls are too thick for her neighbors to hear. At least they’ve never complained about the times she’s had someone over and she and her guest got creative. Is there something she can grab and throw at him?

One of his henchwoman strolls out of her bathroom, wiping her hands on her studded black bootcut jeans. Her black camisole with a bit of lace edging tones the outfit down, makes her less the bloodthirsty dominatrix in appearance than Zsaszettes tend to go for when on the prowl. This is the blonde one Garcia and Morgan met when being politely run out of town. Politely because despite everything, Reid still loves them and will plead for leniency from Nygma on their behalf.

(But he said he’ll face severe repercussions if he spares them too many times. Is this what’s happened? Is he in even worse trouble now because of her selfish hope?)

Garcia has looked into the Zsaszettes, too - she’s Candace “Candy” Maroni, born Cesar Maroni, first cousin once removed to deceased mob boss Salvatore Maroni. Her frame’s become softer and curvier since they last met, without losing her broader shoulders and wider hands than most women. Hormone treatments. Garcia couldn’t find anything solid on why Candace started working for one of her family’s enemies, but Salvatore Maroni was a known misogynist and bigot, while one of bi/pan Zsasz’s few non-monstrous quantities is his respect for the women who work for him. Morgan said that was probably enough on its own right there.

“You’re going to call in a family emergency now,” Zsasz continues as he returns the carton to the fridge and rinses the glass in the sink. “A week off work. Make up dying grandparent or something. Make up reasons why you won’t be in touch much. You’ll be allowed to say hi occasionally so they don’t freak out and start looking for you. Hopefully we can return you home sooner than a week, but if the situation wasn’t serious we wouldn’t have been sent here. Brought our token straight woman, Leonara, to supervise your dressing and clothes packing. In case that’d make you feel better. Candy will pack up your laptop for you.”

The Zsaszette Garcia hadn’t met, but knows from obsessive fact-finding as Leonara Patterson, emerges from the living room. Patterson’s father is still serving fifty to life. She herself has done time for assault, but has never formally been charged with murder despite being seen participating in a number of shootouts. She’s in black, too, a sleeveless belted dress that hugs her Amazonian figure and ends above the knee. Her hair’s in a natural Afro with shaved sides and a single red dyed streak. She does a little bow as greeting.

None of them reach for their guns, but Garcia can see them on the womens’ hips and two in Zsasz’s shoulder holsters. The threat is implied. It’s well-documented that Zsasz and his people do not murder anyone he says he won’t, as long as they do what he wants. It’s also well-documented that Zsasz does not always make his murders quick.

“Go with the flow and nothing’s going to happen to you, promise,” Zsasz says.

Less than half an hour later, Garcia is in the backseat next to Maroni, headed for Gotham. Zsasz is driving and Patterson is in the passenger seat. Whatever rule that makes Zsaszettes stay silent when playing backup no longer applies now, apparently.

Maroni says, “You were a great passenger last time. We’d all prefer if we could just sit together pleasantly in the car together without tying you up or sticking you in the trunk, okay? I hate it when Reid makes sad puppy eyes at me.”

Patterson hums an agreement and pockets Garcia’s phone. She takes out some knitting. (Reid can knit, Garcia remembers with a pang, though not with round needles.) “We weren’t allowed to tell you until you were in the car because Nygma thought it’d make you complacent and less compliant.”

“He was really pleased by his wordplay,” Maroni snorts.

“Tell me what?” Garcia asks, heart in her throat.

“Reid needs your help,” Zsasz says. “It took about six hours of begging and yelling and debate and guilt-tripping, then Penguin was like OH MY GOD YOU TWO. JUST COMPROMISE.”

“We all need your help, really. The normal search efforts aren’t working. Ow, stop it, Leo!” Maroni dodges the swat from her (comrade? cohort? friend?).

“That’s probably enough detail for now,” Zsasz agrees.

Maroni pouts and produces a bag of trail mix to munch on. Garcia accepts the snack bar Maroni gives her, since she missed breakfast, it’s still in the wrapper so probably safe, and she is not facing any more weirdness on an empty stomach.

She’s glad of this decision later when the Zsaszettes start arguing about what music to listen to and play a modified version of Rock, Paper, Scissors they’ve previously invented to resolve it. Zsasz says he doesn’t care.

“It’s called Bat, Cat, Joker,” Patterson explains. “Came up with it during a drunk game night. Catwoman flusters Batman, Joker disconcerts Catwoman, Batman beats up Joker.”

“Catwoman’s the only one we know personally,” Zsasz comments. “She’s a firecracker, that one. Joker shot at me once. He’s actually got terrible aim. Free tip.”

“He’s also said he doesn’t really want to eliminate ‘such fun agents of chaos’ unless we get inconvenient, so maybe he wasn’t trying to hit you,” Maroni points out.

Patterson pats Zsasz’s arm. “Shh, let Vic have his victories. Let’s get down to business, Candy.”

It takes Garcia a moment to remember why a whip crack represents Catwoman, though the fluttery “bat” hands and pulling the corners of your mouth up with your fingers are both obvious. Maroni wins and they end up listening to punk music for the next hour. Thankfully, Patterson’s turn involves calmer female singer-songwriters. She also takes a turn driving, and Zsasz reclines his passenger seat and has a nap. Multiple times, Garcia catches both Zsaszettes looking worried until they realize she's looking at them.

The domesticity makes Garcia relax a little, bizarre as it is. None of these people are in hunting mode, and that’s something. There’s a jarring contrast when they make a rest stop and she is told at least two random people will be shot if she tries to bolt or blows their cover.

“Just because _you’re_ currently too valuable to damage doesn’t mean you can do what you want,” Zsasz says softly. Very softly.

The scariest part is the last twenty minutes, when Garcia has a choice between the trunk or wearing a bag over her head and lying down so she can’t see or be seen through the window. She chooses the second.

Then the car stops. The bag comes off and she’s nudged up. They’re inside a garage.

And Spencer Reid opens the door for her. He’s got dark circles under his eyes and he’s years older than the last time she saw him unmasked, but he’s still got that pretty, adorkable boyishness to his face and one of his small smiles that were rarely carefree but always the sweetest. She throws her arms around him the second she’s out of the car and starts sobbing into his shoulder.

“I’ve missed you too, Penelope,” Reid says, and using her first name just makes it worse. The little brother of the team, the baby of the team that the team failed so badly. She can’t think about what’s happened to him and what he’s done. Right now all that matters is who he is, and that he’s here and not hiding from her.

“We were super nice to her,” Maroni declares from behind Garcia, almost defensively.

“Not a scratch! Call us if you need us. We’ll report to Nygma for you and leave you to your...this...mmkay?”

“Thanks, Victor,” Reid says, and using _his_ first name shocks Garcia into letting go and stepping back. Reid sticks his hands in his pockets as if sheepish. “I’m sorry for the cloak-and-dagger. Ed was leery of letting you back in Gotham at all, but he’s desperate enough that we hashed it out. I won’t let anyone do you harm if you decide not to help, though I can’t guarantee your safety if you tell anyone what happened, or anything you learn here. Even to Morgan. Let me get your bags so we can talk inside.”

Garcia carries her laptop herself as she trails after him into a blandly beige, IKEA-furnished living room. “Where are we?” she asks.

“It’s a safehouse I have a share in.” Reid makes it sound like it’s a vacation home. “Two people were abducted fifty-one hours ago. One is extremely important to Ed, and the other is victim who’s been through a massive amount of trauma already. I told him you were our best bet for getting them back quickly.”

“And you’re not contacting the police because you're all criminals.”

Reid doesn't flinch. “We’re also not sure if some of the GCPD might be in on it or not, they’re incompetent as a whole, and it’s not safe for it to become common knowledge that Ed’s a mentor to Jonathan Crane. I don’t know if you remember -”

Garcia sits down rather than dissolving into a conniption fit, which wouldn’t be useful for anybody. “As in a person your _real_ friends thought was involved in the case that got you snatched by Edward Nygma in the first place?”

“Jonathan was actually horrified when he found out Ed did that,” Reid says, sitting in the opposite chair. He clasps his hands and leans forward. “Penelope.”

“Don’t ‘Penelope’ me.”

“Garcia.”

She rolls her eyes. She’d forgotten how irritating he could be sometimes, bless his heart. “Fine. What?”

“I can’t promise that I’ll stop being the Reader, but the Reader will switch to entirely non-lethal methods if you help us find Jonathan and ‘Jonah’ Crane. Not counting circumstances where I would have been allowed to take a life as an agent, but otherwise permanently.”

That’s actually an impressive concession, given the cold shoulder Reid gave her last time she tried to get him to quit. (Quit. As if this was like his hopefully former drug addiction that she, Goddess of Knowledge and Sparkles, wasn’t supposed to have a clue about.) “First of all, are you serious? Second, who’s Jonah Crane, because Jonathan Crane doesn’t have siblings - I checked - and why can I hear ironic quotes when you say it? Because you’ve got super noticeable ironic quotes in your voice, Wonder Boy.”

Reid sighs and begins.

***

"Ed, love, you need to stop shouting at your reflection. Spencer says that woman is a phenomenal technical analyst. She found Spencer, after all."

"I swear that if Nefyn Pontiac weren't Zsasz's and wasn't already about as unhappy as he could be, I would be tearing him to pieces."

"I doubt Jonathan would be pleased, either."

"Oswald, how'd you feel if something happened to _your_ pet orphan? You can't have me if you have nothing, but I can come the moment you have one thing..."

"Jonathan's an adult and his clone sounds resilient, from what you said. C'mere, let me hold you."

***

JC-2 is trying to curl in on himself, but his wrists are cuffed to the armrests of the wheelchair, so it’s more of a slump. Both he and Jonathan Crane regained consciousness around the same time, but Jonathan is only intermittently lucid without his medication and Strange isn’t going to provide him with it until after another few hours of scans and observations.

  
Strange wonders if JC-2 is raving as well when he looks across the table and asks, “Are we glow-in-the-dark mice?”

“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

JC-2 sniffles, though it’s unclear whether it’s for emotional reasons or not. The initial physical exam revealed that he’s getting over a mild cold. “Researchers will, like, you know, give mice and other lab animals a glow-in-the-dark jellyfish gene so it’s easy to tell if the other stuff they do to them is working. We’ve got different brains from anyone else in the world. Is that why it was us? Why you did this to us?”

“Let’s talk about what happened after you were thawed,” Strange says smoothly. “I’ve had limited reports.” Not that Warden Reed deserved to live another day after flagrantly disobeying orders and _selling_ his charge, even advising the Merton gang to keep JC-2 locked up somewhere windowless on moonless nights. He’ll eventually find out who exactly finished him off. Hopefully it was unpleasant.

“I don’t remember what you did to me in Indian Hill, but it must have involved some kind of hypnotic compulsion stuff to make me lure Jonathan. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise. I wouldn’t.”

Strange consults his notes to refresh his memory on the exact cryogenic settings used. “Much of your memory loss was by design, and the rest is likely mild damage from extended freezing. I do apologize for not coming back for you. Gotham has been an inhospitable environment for me for some time.”

JC-2 raises his eyebrows, showing a modicum of feistiness. “So we’re not in Gotham.”

“Very good! I’m glad Jonathan Crane’s intellect transferred so well.” KK-2 is foolish and foolhardy compared to her DNA donor, as well as functioning as basically a different person. So far JC-2 is Strange’s only success in creating a clone with exactly the same memories and personality at ‘birth’.

(According to his sources, she also tried to flirt with Nygma, possibly out of some subconscious association. Thankfully Nygma was already besotted with Cobblepot and logically disturbed rather than intrigued. Likely chalked it up to the insanity he supposedly does not suffer from anymore but clearly knows he does. Thus a massive incident was narrowly avoided. As far as Strange knows she’s still living a dull librarian life, proof of concept of a functioning independent clone not suffering from internal bleeding, but nothing more. She’s Court of Owls purview now, out of his hands.)

Back to the subject at hand, in more than one sense of the word. Strange notices JC-2 is staring at him like Strange has done something far worse than anything else JC-2 has already experienced today. Given the number of gauze pads taped to him from blood draws and tissue samples, that’s impressive.

He gentles his voice, because he wants this interview to happen on schedule without being interrupted by a full-on existential crisis. “Oh, I see, you were clinging to the hope that _you_ might be the original. I hadn’t realized you’d forgotten Indian Hill to that extent. That must be distressing.”

JC-2 gives a tiny nod. Then he sighs, resigned. “I’ll tell you about Arkham and the gang. I won’t tell you about Jonathan.”

“You’ve had a rough day,” Strange says indulgently. “We can get to that later.”

He video records the interview but takes written notes of his own spur-of-the moment observations. One confession gives him pause, but he doesn’t show it on his face and break the flow. He allows JC-2 to stop when he reaches the part about how he was taken out of Arkham, and instructs his assistants to make sure he’s adequately nourished and hydrated before he’s returned to his room.

Then he calls for the Arkham orderly. He’s a sturdy man in his late thirties, crooked nose from it being broken in childhood and more gray in his brown hair than most men his age. Warden Reed thought he was Strange’s one contact on the inside, the sole caretaker of an asset Strange had been forced to leave behind in a rush. Having a second one unbeknownst to him was supposed to have been insurance against double-crossing. Supposed to be.

“A toast to our success, Mr. Farmer?” Strange asks, pouring each of them a drink from the stash on the shelf behind his desk.

Farmer clinks and drinks. “You bet. I never saw the two of them next to each other before, you know. Gave me the willies. Impressive work.”

Not losing his smile, Strange says, “When you told me that the sale and transfer of JC-2 was a unilateral, secret decision that took you by surprise while you were on leave, I gave you the benefit of the doubt.”

“I showed you my official employee time sheets,” Farmer says, now slightly wary but not nearly as contrite as he should be.

“Yes. I’ve just learned that both of you were in an arrangement with JC-2 in which you provided him with modest comforts in exchange for physical favors.” He can’t help but say the last two words with distaste. It’s just so tawdry. Lurid.

“That’s - that’s ridiculous!” The knee-jerk rejection is far too defensive rather than confused.

Strange peers over his round tinted glasses. "I paid you generously out of the limited budget my sponsors have given me for building a state-of-the art remote facility. Simply because I’ve reconciled with them does not mean they have become particularly generous.” After Nygma and his allies - and to a certain but lesser extent Jim Gordon - threw a spanner in the whole Tetch virus attempt, to Strange’s secret relief, the Court finally agreed that his work should be in a more secure location. One inaccessible to, say, acrobatic street urchins.

“The kid made it up,” Farmer says, red-faced.

Strange continues, “All I needed was him in no worse condition than I left him by the time I was ready to bring them together. That was all I needed from you. I created JC-2 for important things. He wasn’t there for your entertainment.”

Now comes the contrition. The panic. “D-doctor?”

“The excruciating convulsions should be setting in momentarily. Try running if you like.” Strange pours the poison in his own glass back into the bottle. Waste not.

***

  
Crane sleeps, possibly drugged and possibly just worn out, and wakes in his bunk and clutching his pillow with the blankets over his head. He wallows in self-pity, since it’s probably the only luxury he’s going to get for a while. Possibly forever.

When he gets tired of his own thoughts about whether he counts as real or not, he sings off-key and quavering. “ _I am an orphan, an orphan boy, I’ve known no love, I’ve seen no mother’s joy. A dirty doorstep my cradle laid, my fortune’s made, I’ll shake you from your sleep -_ ”

“Yes. Well done. Good job.”

Crane sits up. Jonathan is in the bunk on the other side of the cell. His right wrist is on a long chain attached to the headboard. He looks wilder-eyed than Crane has seen him before, but he sounds dry as usual and his posture is calm. “What did you do?”

Jonathan tugs idly at the chain. “I think when I was delirious I took a swing at someone. I can get far enough to use the bedpan, though. Was that really Hugo Strange playing mad doctor with me, or was I hallucinating the entire thing, not just the pointy straw hat on his head? By the way, before you say anything to me, consider that we’re probably being filmed. Seeing how we interact. Otherwise why put us together?”

“That’s true.” Crane resolves not to give anything away about anyone who’s helped him. “I’m really sorry I got you into this.”

“You’ve had your head screwed with.”

“Sorry I threw a tantrum and hit you.”

“You’re only seven. It’s to be expected.”

Crane huffs a laugh despite himself. “You knew I was the clone all along?”

“You have to admit it would be easier that way around. I may or may not have hallucinated being told to try to cheer you up about it.” Jonathan casts his eyes around the ceiling and settles on the little pinhole that must be the camera. “We could make out? Make whoever’s reviewing the footage blush.”

“Oh God. I’ll pass, thanks.” He nestles back into the blankets again. “All your memories from before they made me are so real.”

Jonathan settles into his blankets as well. “I said they’re ours and I mean it. Let’s reminisce. We never really did that systematically. You remember science camp? These bunks are nicer, at least…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Candy likes punk because irisbleufic suggested that she might look like Against Me! lead singer and trans woman Laura Jane Grace, except for in coloring and tattoos. [Here's her performing "FUCKMYLIFE666" from the album "Transgender Dysphoria Blues".](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0x11oNv0IU) In case you're new to my Gotham fics, Leonara is my name for the African-American Zsaszette who shows up in two episodes of Season 1. 
> 
> \- The answer to Ed's riddle is "loss".
> 
> \- Let's assume that the Tetch virus thing somehow didn't get off the ground as a result of various ripple effects from this AU. Let's assume that while Season 4 didn't happen, Oswald still ended up mentoring a cute orphan. 
> 
> \- Crane was singing ["The Chimbley Sweep" by The Decemberists.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYm3-7hkMww)


	9. Seven for a Secret

Harley goes through several stages of horror and worry as Nefyn tells her what happened at the cemetery. When it’s over, she puts a hand on his shoulder. “Then what did you do?”

“Does it matter?” he asks, his damp eyes on the road. He’s just picked up her and her small suitcase from her place. They’re headed to where Reid and Penelope Garcia are working on finding out where Jonathan and Crane are, including trying to decrypt some of the digital files Selina stole. Harley is Jonathan’s best friend and the person Crane connected with most. Garcia wants to talk to her.

“Yes, it matters,” she says. 

******

Nefyn didn’t regret running away. He and Jonathan had made a pact long ago that neither of them would risk both of them getting killed out of a misplaced sense of nobility. The captors wanted both Jonathan and Crane alive, and they definitely would have shot Nefyn seconds after Jonathan was in their grasp. Jonathan had known that and did the smartest thing he could have.

No, Nefyn regretted indulging Crane’s wish when there were so many reasons not to. Just because he was like Jonathan, but weaker and smaller and so, so haunted, a version that Nefyn was allowed to hug, one who’d been through experiences like his -

Enough. When he jumped into his car he concentrated on driving as fast as feasible. He called Kali, because she was calm in a crisis and wouldn’t yell at him when he couldn’t take it right now, and because she could be trusted to spread the news in the best way.

When he was finished, she said, “Understood. Are you hurt?”

“Two broken fingers. Left pinkie and ring. I heard the snap and they’re bent weird now, so I figure fractured. Underestimated me. Should have broken my right arm at minimum.” It was still enough to lower his chances of beating four men with guns. He always had several knives on him unless he was at home or Jonathan’s, but only carried a gun when he was working. He should have been Knifepoint, not Nefyn, tonight.

She didn’t ask if they hurt, because she didn’t ask obvious questions. “Do you need me?”

“Teeth can deal with minor fractures, right? The Army taught him some field medicine.” Because as agonizing as it was going to be to go to the old Crane home right now, it was the nearest place owned by the Zsasz Family. Jonathan started renting it to them, then eventually sold it to them, and now the guy who used to rent what was now Nefyn’s bedroom was renting the whole house.

“Yes, he can. Call me when you’re at the house. Leave a voicemail if need be.”

“It’s been less than a fucking month since Jonathan got better from getting fucking shot, Kali.” Nefyn hoped the kidnapper he gutted would die slowly. He was fairly sure the degree of disembowelment was beyond help. Normally he dispatched people in seconds. Normally, when it was nothing personal. 

Her voice went warm and sympathetic rather than businesslike. “You’re not alone in this, _shona_. I’ll get to work. Call me.”

When he got to the old Crane house the lights were on, so Teeth was home. Nefyn’s left hand was in too much pain and his right hand too shaky to fish out the spare key, so he banged on the door and shouted, “PRAISE HIS NOODLE-Y GLORY!” Teeth belonged to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, hence the password.

“RAmen!” Teeth replied before opening the door in all his arsenic-spiked apple pie glory. He looked Nefyn up and down. “Holy shit. Come in. You and Jonathan break up?”

The well-meant question was like a slap to the face. “Titus Heath, I need finger splints, not a lot of questions right now, and a drink.”

Teeth’s beagle Beretta wandered over to sniff Nefyn while Teeth fixed up his hand, no anesthetic except a shot of whisky. Nefyn ended up telling him the whole story, in vivid detail, because masochism springs eternal. Teeth made jokes about Nefyn being the more macho one right now, for once. Nefyn promptly passed out.

When he came to, he was lying on the couch wrapped in a blanket with a pillow under his head, and Victor was sitting on the arm of the couch scratching behind Beretta’s ears. He switched to petting Nefyn’s hair. “Good morning. Teeth put something in your drink to make you rest. I’ve reprimanded him because that’s creepy, even though I think maybe you needed it. You’re gonna shower and eat something, then you’re gonna go to the big mansion to grovel at Nygma’s feet, then we’re gonna fix this.”

“I hadn’t even thought about Nygma,” Nefyn groaned. “He’s going to torture me both physically and with word puzzles. I won’t even stop him, because I deserve it.”

Victor’s fingers went still, and he said quietly, “He’s not touching you. You’re mine. I don’t care what you think you deserve.”

“Yes, sir.” 

Back to hair petting. “You did screw up a bit, though, and groveling will improve his mood.”

“Have you ever groveled? Not counting, uh, for fun?” Zsasz didn’t mind people knowing he was a switch, but Nefyn had never actually been invited to see him play sub. 

“Not for our current patrons, hell no.” Victor called them ‘boss’ or similar to their faces to keep them happy, but that’s not what he thought of them. “Groveled for Falcone once. I was younger then and he had a lot more dignity than you see these days. These two, I go way too far back with ‘em.”

In the end, Nygma only raged at him for a few minutes before flopping into the chair next to his silently watching husband. Nefyn didn’t literally have to throw himself on the floor, just stood with his hands behind his back and his eyes downcast. Because he wasn’t looking directly at the Kings of Gotham, it took him a moment to realize that Nygma had his face in his hands and was shaking. Penguin put a hand on his knee and rubbed soothing circles with his thumb. He addressed Nefyn. “Let’s focus on moving forward. How effective would you be with those broken fingers?”

“I’d estimate at least eighty percent of my usual, sir, as long as I have time to devise compensating strategies. I’ve fought while more injured than this.”

“And we know you’re very motivated.”

“Very, very, very motivated, sir.”

Penguin nodded. “You’re on call until further notice. Devise your compensating strategies.”

******

Harley has barely recovered some emotional strength after her brief undercover stint as “Columbina”, one of Joker’s acolytes who didn’t only see him as a cult figure but also had a crush on him. A groupie as well as an eager minion. Even if she isn’t okay with everything Jonathan and everyone associated with him has done, their violence has always had a purpose. Limits. Not running around causing havoc almost literally for shits and giggles. The only things getting her through it was knowing Ivy and her friends had her back, and that the information relayed back to Penguin is going to put a serious crimp in their most recent plans. Penguin is no vigilante, but he doesn’t want to be dealing with hallucinogens in the water supply any more than the next citizen, and deploying his resources as well as organizing a tip to the GCPD will get everything done a lot faster and better than letting the GCPD handle it on their own. (Or leaving them to run crying to Batman like she totally knows Gordon does; Selina’s seen it happen.)

The money isn’t bad, either. She’s saving up for an actual Harley-Davidson and the motorcycle lessons to go with it. 

Harley assumes it’s because of the Joker thing that Penguin isn’t playing much of role in saving Jonathan and his clone other than keeping his husband from total collapse. She’s intrigued by this mysterious ally from Reader’s former life that’s been recruited to help. 

Her heart is pounding as she sets eyes on the woman for the first time. She’s maybe in her late thirties, a beautiful, larger and brightly-dressed woman with red-framed glasses on a beaded chain and blonde hair dangling in mussed ringlets. She looks worried and tired but her fingers are busy on a laptop on the desk of the safe house’s bland little office. She’s so in her own world that she doesn’t look up when door opens. 

Reader is sitting next to her, looking at the laptop over her shoulder and with a stack of paper files in front of him. He waves Harley and Nefyn in. 

“This is my, uh, old friend Penelope Garcia. Garcia, this is Harleen Quinzel, about to start her Master’s in psychology. Jonathan’s best friend since high school. And this is Nefyn Pontiac, who works in security at a club.”

Garcia stops typing and raises an eyebrow. “The Iceberg Lounge?” Her voice is familiar somehow.

“No, ma’am. Foxglove. It’s Gotham’s most elite BDSM club, but elite doesn’t always mean well-behaved. I know I don’t look like your standard security type. It’s a convenient red flag if a member tries to push me around.” Nefyn is not completely lying, Harley knows. He’s just making one of his freelance gigs sound like a regular position - the same one he does for tax purposes. "You can look it up if you want. I know that’s the main thing you do, find information on people.”

Garcia’s gaze lands on Nefyn’s finger splints and her face turns sympathetic. “What happened, honey? Reid told me you were with Jonathan and ‘Jonah’ and were unable to stop them from being taken.”

“Your name is actually Reid?” Harley blurts out. His ‘supervillain’ name seems so lazy now. “That’s your actual, real, original name?”

Reader - Reid, apparently - sighs deeply. “It’s asking for trouble to have one person out of the loop.”

“Why does Nefyn know?” Garcia asks.

“One thing at a time, please. Short version, Harley, which of course you’re not going to tell anyone: my real name is Dr. Spencer Reid, Ph.D, and I used to work for the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI.”

“As in using psychology to catch criminals?” Harley asks, fascinated despite herself.

“Serial killers, mostly,” Garcia says, with a bitter edge to her voice. 

Oh. Ohhhhhhhh. Like Jonathan. Does she know? But Jonathan’s never been arrested, so does she just suspect? 

But - “How’d you end up...well, switching?”

Reid leans back and crosses his arms. Defensive body language. “I was asked to consult on a case in Gotham. Ed and Oswald didn’t like having FBI agents in their city and decided to get rid of them, but Ed couldn’t bear to have me killed, so he saved me.”

“By which you mean he faked your death and held you prisoner until the drugging and brainwashing was done.” The bitterness isn’t just the edge this time.

“He gave me time to come around largely on my own without forcing the issue like he could have. He only nonconsensually drugged me once, and he didn’t know that I’d have an atypical reaction; in fact neither of us noticed until more trials had been done on other people,” Reid says, far too calmly. Harley shivers.

Garcia looks from Reid to Harley to Nefyn and back again. “And Jonathan made the drug.”

“That wasn’t its intended purpose. Again, he was horrified. The only reason he didn’t end his friendship with Ed over it was he couldn’t think of what else Ed could have done either.”

“He couldn’t think of…? Is that how you conceptualize things these days? That what happened to you was _necessary_? Oh God. I can’t believe any of this is happening,” Garcia says, looking up as if trying to find an answer in the ceiling. 

Nefyn clears his throat. “Look. I know there are a lot of deep and fraught interpersonal issues happening right now, but Jonathan and his completely innocent clone could be being tortured or vivisected or something right now, too. That’s the more time-sensitive issue, don’t you think?”

Reid nods. “There are folding chairs in the closet and we can pool our knowledge without making Garcia shift her station.”

“I’m working on decrypting Strange’s files on ‘Jonah’ while also running a search on the friends and families of people Jonathan _murdered_ , in case this is simply about vengeance. I can’t tell you how many times our team found out that we’d been assuming the wrong motive.” Garcia takes a sip from her mug and makes a face. “I need more coffee.”

“I’ll get it for you,” Nefyn says. “How much sugar and creamer?”

Harley suspects this is Nefyn’s excuse to go take some deep breaths in another room, and maybe Garcia thinks so too, because she doesn’t argue and just describes her preferences. Nefyn offers to fetch drinks for everyone else, too. While Nefyn’s gone, Harley and Reid set up the two chairs. 

Harley sits and says, “Whatever you think of us, Ms. Garcia, Nefyn thinks this is all his fault. And he’s in love with Jonathan. Jonathan’s aromantic and they aren’t monogamous, but Jonathan does love him back. Nygma would kill for Jonathan. He has. I think Nefyn would die for him? So bear that in mind?”

Garcia is scrolling quickly through her screen and not meeting her eyes. “Did you know what Jonathan was doing?”

“No. I didn’t find out about all this until about a year ago. I stumbled onto Riddler and Reader at Jonathan’s house in costume. Jonathan stood up for me when Nygma wanted to kill me to keep the secret of their association safe. I was sworn to secrecy instead. I was upset when I found out about the handful innocent homeless people Jonathan killed, but all the others were trying to mug him? I mean he baited them, but...I guess I still saw him as my friend, first and foremost, and I forgave him. And he doesn’t do that anymore. He says he won’t anymore because he doesn’t need to. I think the therapy and medication have helped him stop feeling like he needs to, and have helped him actually get in touch with his conscience without it being all indirect and diffused? He and me want to become a psychiatrist and psychologist and clean up Arkham, Ms. Garcia. Even if you could put Jonathan in prison or Arkham or a federal version of either of them, it’d just make him worse. He’s getting better and he’s going to do important things. As for Crane...”

“That’s what they’ve been going by, respectively,” Reid explains. 

Harley feels like she’s going to cry, or possibly throw up. She’s been trying hard not to think about poor Crane. Nefyn brings her an orange juice and that helps. She and Nefyn answer every single question Garcia asks them about their relationships with Jonathan as she multitasks. Because there’s been almost no overlap between each other’s crimes, or at least under-the-table work for Penguin in Harley’s case, they can answer honestly. Reid says very little except for sometimes jumping in to add a bit of context. 

Later, Nefyn announces he’s going to make dinner. Everyone gives his broken fingers a Look but he pleads to be allowed to keep busy. Reid goes to make a phone call to his cousin. So much makes sense now. So much is worse now.

They’re all discouraged from spending time outside the house in case they’re seen, but there’s a skylight to sit under and get a bit of daylight. Harley sees Garcia on the floor in the patch of sun, hugging her knees.  
Harley sits beside her. “I’m not going to ask if you’re okay. Nobody here is.” She imagines thinking Jonathan’s dead, then finding him much later and him being told that actually he quite likes the people who captured him, please go away. That has to be an incredible amount of pain.

Garcia snorts. “You sound like you’ll be a good therapist one day, sweetie. Though maybe you take acceptance and tolerance a teensy bit too far.”

“Maybe,” Harley agrees. “My girlfriend is the first person I’ve dated that I don’t let walk all over me.”

“I get the sense you’re all leaning towards the ‘unethical experimentation victim’ angle rather than the ‘revenge’ angle, so I’m devoting most of my processing power to the decryption.”

“Oh my god, I just realized that you were the voice on the radio.”

There’s a crashing noise from the kitchen and loud cursing. Nefyn probably didn’t hear. It’s more likely that he forgot about his fingers. 

Garcia raises her eyebrows. “You heard that?”

“Yeah. How did you do it? Stuff like that and the decryption doesn't match what people say you do for a living.” She doesn’t tell Garcia about the fight it sparked off. Needlessly upsetting. 

“I used to be an illegal hacker. Got the choice between working for The Man or going to jail. I’ve been experimenting with new media over the past few years.” Garcia pauses and then puts her chin in one hand. “Did any of you have any idea about what was going to happen to Crane long-term?”

***

Crane’s being examined and tested a lot more than Jonathan is. He supposes Strange wants to know if his unique product has held up over the years, especially given Selina’s comment about meeting a clone once that didn’t share the original’s memories and got nosebleeds.

After they start giving him his medication again - fortunately Jonathan keeps a list of his medications and their dosages in his wallet at all times, giving them a handy reference - most of Jonathan’s testing involves his physical brain as well as his mind. It’s not so bad, given the whole Indian Hill 2.0 scenario. Scans while being asked questions of varying complexity, some of them math, and IQ tests. These are all carried out by white-coated minions.

His interview with Strange himself is his first opportunity to try to affect the situation rather than pick his battles and comply. He’s seen pictures of Strange. They don’t capture the true smugness. 

The moment the wheelchair is parked and they’ve been left alone in his incongruously luxurious office together, Jonathan says, “Are you familiar with the Paperboy street drug?”

Strange uncaps a fountain pen. “By reputation, though not by personal use.”

“Do you know that if you give someone enough of it over a short period of time, you can essentially manipulate them into super suggestible Stockholm Syndrome?” What mad scientist/doctor wouldn’t want something like that?

“Go on.”

“Do you know who invented it?”

“You’re saying you did.”

“Sort of by accident. It was a byproduct of coming up with an antidote for my fear serum. You know, like what my father gave me, but less permanent.”

“Hmm.”

“I’ve come up with an airborne version of it, too. It’s much better than what Crane - I mean my clone - was able to make with less time and fewer resources. You likely heard about that; I’m sure you’ve questioned the one gang member who got away from me. I have a lot of tricks up my sleeve, if you’ve been wondering how I rescued my clone in the first place.” Jonathan would rather Strange think he doesn’t have people coming to save them. Which he does, it’s just a question of what condition he and Crane will be in by the time they arrive.

“Why are you telling me this?”

Jonathan tries to gesture but the restraints are preventing him. “Just warning you that if you cut up my brain, I might no longer be able to do all that. Like mutilating the golden goose. It’d be a waste of potential, don’t you think? I’m not a hero, Doctor. I don’t really care who I make stuff for.”

“Hm. You’ve done me a favor, young man.”

“Already?” That may or may not be good. 

Strange nods, somehow even more smug. “I’ve spent days pondering how best to determine if your clone can receive upgrades to procedural memory as well as long-term memory. It’ll be a pity if the simultaneous-timeline data overload renders him catatonic, of course, but we still have your circa age 15 hard drive safely in storage for a reboot if required.”

Jonathan is silent for a moment while putting all the pieces together. It made sense to want to test procedural memory separately from conscious long-term memory. They worked differently. Thistle had kept the former from her previous life but forgotten the latter, for example. “Did his temporal lobe surgery serve a dual purpose, then? Not just making the Scarecrow manageable, but also making him a more receptive vessel for my memories?”

“Such a shame that you’re not sane enough to be a useful research assistant,” Strange says, sadly yet smugly patronizing. “I need you to tell me the differences between your original post-overdose state, vs. what happened every time you had one of your distress-induced ‘seizures’ until that problem was resolved, vs. what happened when you were recently shot in the shoulder, vs. when your medication was withheld. I want to minimize the chances of giving you a genuine grand mal seizure tomorrow. Possibly several. Unfortunately my sponsors are impatient, otherwise I would be testing both of you more thoroughly beforehand.”

“Oh, hooray.” _I wonder what you’re afraid of, you self-satisfied toad._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Columbina/Columbine is a female servant who ends up cheating on her husband with Harlequin.


	10. Never to Be Told

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first part contains discussion of canonical drug addiction and spoilers for the Criminal Minds two-parter "The Big Game"/"Revelations".

That night, Garcia gets the room that is either a master bedroom or a relatively cozy cell, depending what’s needed, and Nefyn and Harley take the room with the two sets of bunk beds. Spencer starts out on one of the bunk beds but realizes that with his current stress levels, his largely-conquered fear of the dark has come back with raging force. (He tried Jonathan’s newest fear serum once, under controlled conditions, and temporarily went blind.) He isn’t in the mood to dig out the air mattress or pull out the sofa. He just lies down on the sofa and drapes a blanket over himself, leaving the standing lamp on the other side of the room at its dimmest setting. He considers taking some Paperboy, but not only does he need to be sharp in the morning, it seems gauche somehow, considering who created it and still produces the active ingredient concentrate to distribute for processing.

He’s woken by a light touch on his cheek, the kind of touch only one person uses with him. He opens his eyes and drowsily shifts to face her better. “People might walk in, Amethyst.” Amethyst is no more her “real” name than Thistle is, as far as they know, but she’s fond of using it as her first name for official purposes. He’s fond of using it for mock-scolding her.

“You were mumbling. It sounded so sad. Which one’s Tobias?”

“The one in Georgia,” he replies softly. The victim, the compassionate one, the one who’d saved his life, who’d given him opiates for the pain his other personalities were putting Spencer through. The one Spencer shot when the others were about to execute him for his “sins”.

Tobias Hankel made Spencer a junkie. What was worse, he made Spencer see him in others - Adam/Amanda, Owen, Nathan, Ed, Jonathan and his duplicate. What Garcia thought started with Spencer’s investigation of Jonathan and Ed’s murders actually began a long time ago.

(Maybe it began when he started high school at eight, Mom and her marriage was falling to pieces, and Ed’s letters were the only things that felt sane.)

Thistle brushes a strand of hair out of his face. “Oh dear. Are you jonesing?”

“I’ve got too much to do.” It was Ed who pushed Reid through in-home detox the last time he relapsed, but Spencer doesn’t believe in getting into an ongoing romantic or sexual relationship without disclosing his problem. (He thinks of Ethan with a pang, Ethan who’d known him so long and knew without being told after few minutes of looking at him.)

She sighs but also half-smiles. “That’s as good a reason not to relapse as any. I caught up on sleep at Jonathan’s house once your cousin showed up to look for clues and anything else useful. Jesús is pet-sitting Cordelia, by the way. He’s out of commission with a partial ACL tear. I told him he could keep the eggs.”

“Thank you.” He’d completely forgotten. See, Ed, this was what he meant when he protested having a bantam hen fobbed off on him after that one unusual Riddler & Reader Caper.

“If you’re worried about people walking in, I’m going to sit over there and quietly clean guns. Brought several. I’m a very quiet gun-cleaner, everyone says so.” She puts a hand on either side of his head to kiss him. She does that a lot; apparently the appealing part is getting to “cuddle his brain”. If things were different, he thinks she’d get along with Garcia.

He wakes again to daylight and Garcia shaking him. “Reid. Reeeeeeid. Breakthrough. I need you, and I might need a lot of other people as well.”

***

“As you can see, as many tests are being done simultaneously as possible, to the point where we dispensed with a hospital gown because it was in the way. We even skipped full sedation and general anesthetic on JC-2 so he’ll recover for the memory transplant more quickly. Jonathan’s already in upload.” Through their side of the two-way mirror, Strange and his visitor are keeping an eye on proceedings.

“He is partially sedated, then,” Kathryn, leader of the Court of Owls comments. Strange used to merely dread her a bit. Now he loathes her with every fiber of his being. Funding and protection are both very difficult to come by, though.

“The stress would be too much so close to the main procedure. It’s twilight sedation. He’s uncomfortable but compliant and won’t remember anything.” Strange notices something and presses the intercom button. “Browning, increase the flow of oxygen and go more slowly. Subject is starting to choke on the oscope.”

_“Yes, Doctor.”_

“You’re certain this one has had no internal bleeding?” She’s taken to growing her nails long and filed sharp but painted gray, he notices. They match her stilettos.

“That’s being double-checked right now, but it seems the regimen of periodic body temperature reductions and electric muscle stimulation has prevented the negative cellular breakdown effects we’ve previously had with defrosted clones. It’s thankfully no longer necessary, otherwise his brief period between Arkham and retrieval would have been more disastrous.” Clones are far more useful if you have the option of saving them for later. It was rather clever of the warden to disguise this maintenance as quack medical procedures, Strange will give him that.

“We’ve been watching and listening, and the audio for the camera in your office keeps failing.”

“How odd,” Strange replies with a schooled expression.

“And the positions you and those you speak to in there are such as to make lip-reading impossible.”

“Bizarre.”

She looks down her nose at him. “Your projects have failed to come to full fruition twice now. This is your last chance.”

“I’ll do what you need, but I need a little more time.”

“Remember what happened last time you said that?”

He suppresses a shudder at the memory of Fish Mooney’s uprising and the disrupting effects of Jim Gordon, Bruce Wayne, and that little girl who came for Firefly. And the two separate motley crews, Gordon-led and Penguin-led, that stifled the Tetch virus operation. “Why the rush, if I may ask?”

Gritting her teeth, Kathryn said, “Batman’s been skulking around. The sooner you can finish packing up this pair, now that you’ve handed over your other specimens, the sooner we can move them to somewhere more secret. Far too many employees know this place.”

Strange does not plan on handing over this pair. He knows for a fact that Crane can create a fear toxin, so he finds it very plausible that Jonathan can create all manner of useful drugs as well. He needs a card to play after he gets out of here.

He smiles thinly. “Fair enough. The neurologist who assisted with the initial upload when Jonathan was his psychotic patient says it took approximately thirty hours, though his condition is sufficiently different now that I’d put it at more like twenty. Then we’ll wait for JC-2 to finish uploading his backup memory in case Jonathan’s memories completely overwhelm his sense of self rather than coexisting. Then we can proceed.”

“Is it really necessary to create a backup for JC-2 when you already have a backup for his original download? If I understand correctly, his memories consist of vague Indian Hill shadows, three years of being treated more poorly than the average Arkham patient, a handful of weeks of forced labor, and a handful of days in Jonathan Crane’s home.”

Strange raises an eyebrow. “I’m no sentimentalist, but I want to make sure you understand. In the event that Jonathan’s past seven years of memories overwrite JC-2’s independent ones and there is no backup, JC-2 - who has developed a distinct personality - for all intents and purposes _will be dead._ We’ll simply have two Jonathan Cranes.”

“I’m no sentimentalist either, but given what I just described moments ago, it sounds like you’d be doing him a favor.” She gives an elegant shrug. “Either way, it’s immaterial.”

***

“Immaterial!” Garcia pulls back from the screen. Her eyes are red and teary. “Immaterial.”

Spencer puts an arm around her shoulders. “How did you do that?”

“The cameras and bugs she mentioned transmit data wirelessly. Getting into Strange’s files super early this morning gave me some idea what to look for. I didn’t go deep into the text files, though. You’d do it a lot faster.”

“You can send it to my tablet and that way Reid can read it without hogging your computer,” Harley says. She’s red with rage but breathing evenly.

“I think we should cut Strange and that owl pellet of a woman into the tiniest pieces possible,” Nefyn growls.

Garcia takes a deep breath. “Or, if you don’t kill him or her, there’s something I’ll be able to do for Crane.”

“I think we should call a big meeting before we get much further,” Thistle suggests.

***

During the big meeting, the following is established:

\- There is a helicopter pad near where the signal Garcia has tapped into came from.

\- Ivy’s managed to produce some more mind-control perfume, but not much. Her plant hypergrowth trick can now go very far if you don’t need her to have the strength to walk afterwards.

\- Teeth knows where to borrow a helicopter that seats eleven plus the pilot, and more if people are willing to sit on the floor.

\- Yoona the Zsaszette knows how to fly a helicopter. Teeth the Zsasz Family Friend knows how to fly a helicopter. Victor Zsasz knows how to not-crash a helicopter in a vaguely correct direction.

\- Ed helped Jonathan develop all his drugs and has a spare key/knows the combination to Jonathan’s barn laboratory, and that’s why he went to Jonathan’s home earlier. He left the large canister outside for safety.

\- Everyone knows that Jonathan is immune to his own products. Nobody knows if Crane would be too, or how he would react.

\- The squad: Ed, Reid, Nefyn, Harley, Ivy, Zsasz, Thistle, Dr. Kali, Selina, Bridgit, Yoona as pilot, and Teeth as copilot.

***

Nineteen hours after Kathryn’s inspection, Jonathan Crane’s memory upload is complete. He’s off his medications again and doing an odd, feral mix of whimpering and growling as Strange supervises the removal of the wires from his head. He pages the team with JC-2 and instructs them to start prepping for download. JC-2 is on a high dose of anti-anxiety medications to keep him receptive but will otherwise not be sedated.

Strange has the little metal capsule containing Jonathan Crane’s memories in his bag as he heads to the room containing JC-2. He also has an air-purifying respirator, because he intends to test his subjects’ weapon-making abilities as soon as possible before the Court catches him at it.

He becomes very glad of the latter when alarms start going off and a yellowish-green gas starts pouring through the air vents. He quickly straps the mask on and rushes into the room with JC-2, the most valuable asset. His progress is slowed by all the people screaming and running amok in the corridors, and at one point he uses his stun gun to clear a path, but he does make it.

He makes it and finds JC-2, yes. JC-2’s hair has been partly and unevenly shaved, making him look bedraggled and inhuman. He’s wearing stolen scrubs that are far too big and smeared with iodine. He’s appropriated a surgical mask and used more iodine to draw a snarling mouth on it. He has the bone drill intended for his skull gripped tightly in his left hand, plugged in by its very long power cord, and whirring. He has a scalpel in his right. Every member of the surgical team is dead.

“Crane?” Strange hopes the use of a name will calm JC-2 long enough to perhaps be able to get close and stun him.

JC-2 slowly tilts his head. His voice is muffled by the surgical mask and distorted by however many layers of chemicals and pain have led him to this moment.

**“Jonathan Crane isn’t here anymore. Just the Scarecrow.”**

And he lunges.


	11. Eight for a Wish, Nine for a Kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains spoilers for the Criminal Minds episode "Conflict". (It's a case-of-the-week episode, not part of a big plot arc.)
> 
> Also contains implied threat of murder-suicide.

Zsasz owns six earpiece/microphone combinations that operate on a closed channel to donate to the cause. He has six to account for himself, Kali, three Zsaszettes, and Nefyn. There isn’t time to run out and get more, plus the more they have, the more likely someone could steal one and listen in.

One goes to Garcia, of course, since she is accessing the camera footage from Gotham. Candy and Leonara are guarding her.

One goes to Kali, as one of the people staying with the helicopter, so she can give any emergency medical advice. Yoona is staying with her to protect her romantic partner and their transportation, as well as help act as lookout. Yoona’s still a little banged-up from the big firefight a few days ago, so this relatively lighter duty makes sense. Besides, she doesn’t want to leave Kali alone, even if Kali went through Basic before qualifying as a combat medic. She’ll also help Kali make her way to any injured who can’t be moved.

One goes to Ivy, who needs to go wherever she’s called. Teeth is going to accompany her to shoot at people while she’s too busy to deal with them herself. Ivy has her vial of perfume around her neck, though she warns it’ll be no good if her mark is busy inhaling a stronger substance. She also has two potted baby bamboo plants and a bunch of creeper seeds in a planter to make ladders, crack open walls, and snag people in sudden bonds. “They need some soil to get started, so I have to bring some with me,” she explains. “They’ll wither quickly without adding water, but for our purposes that’s no biggie.”

One goes to Selina, who is with Bridgit for Team Judiciously Pillage Then Burn - if it was in Bridgit’s ear, it might suffer heat damage from being so close to the flamethrower. Garcia and Reid have given them an illustrated shopping list of incriminating or useful things to grab if they can, and Selina’s got a roomy leather backpack to put it all in.

One goes to Ed, leader of Team Get Fear Gas Into Ventilation System Then Rescue Jonathan. Zsasz is accompanying him because the fear gas part is so critical, Ed gets reckless when he’s desperate, and he’s best-equipped for actually carrying Jonathan. Nefyn is part of the group, too. Jonathan might not be in his right mind when they get there, and they’re hoping the combination of Ed and Nefyn will calm him.

The last goes to Reid, leader of Team Rescue Crane and Apprehend Strange. Every member of this team is someone whom Crane has unambiguously positive feelings towards (since it’s possible that he might bear some resentment at Nefyn failing to protect him). The others are Harley and Thistle. During the meeting before they leave, when Ed asks if Thistle is absolutely certain she could run out of the building while holding Crane, she asks Nefyn if she can pick him up, and does a circuit of the safehouse at full speed. “I don’t actually have super strength, but when you have super endurance you can work out for a long time.”

Ed showed up at the meeting in full Riddler regalia. Thistle picked up Reid’s Reader costume and mask when she was arranging Cordelia’s care. “Wear this, too,” Garcia said when handing Reid something wrapped in brown paper. When he saw what it was, he tried to argue, but she just stared at him until he agreed.

Harley has deliberately dressed exactly as she was when Crane first saw her, though she’ll also wear an easily removable black half-mask to reduce her recognizability otherwise. Several of the others have expressed concern about her lack of superpowers or extensive training. She announced that she will be supplementing the handgun she has learned how to use reasonably well with a baseball bat full of nails, her weapon of choice when pretending to be besotted with the Joker. Ivy joked that they’re not going there to “save Eleven from the Demogorgon”, which about half the group understood.

It’s a forty-minute flight to a hidden helipad in the middle of deep New England forest. Reid doesn’t put on his [mask of burnt book pages with lace over the eyes](http://img12.deviantart.net/35cd/i/2013/257/4/f/mask_of_burnt_book_pages_with_lace_over_the_eyes_by_dovespirit-d6mcnqa.jpg) until they’re just about to land. The mask Jonathan made him as a gift. He decides to dispense with his black newsboy cap, just as Ed is skipping the green bowler, and he’s not donning the herringbone jacket because he doesn’t want to overheat and needs maximum freedom of movement. He checks the shoelaces of his black Converse to make sure they won’t trip him.

Everyone who’ll be entering the building gets a respirator to wear. Leonara was sent to hit up a home improvement store and grab a bunch of the kind for when you work with paint, which is not perfect but should keep them from anything worse than mild anxiety and dizziness, and was easy to get on short notice. Thistle has a stronger resistance but still needs one if she’s going to be in there for more than a few minutes.

“I have a recommendation for everyone,” Zsasz says the moment they touch down and everyone takes off their helicopter-passenger earphones. “It’s one of my catchphrases.”

“Is it, ‘You’ll make a nice scar?’” Selina asks. She and Bridgit have been holding hands the entire flight. Bridgit has been very quiet.

Zsasz taps his chin thoughtfully. “Huh. I’ve never said that, but maybe I should. No, I say, ‘Bathroom break! Pee before melee.’”

“Yes, he does,” Nefyn confirms when Selina snorts.

Ed takes a deep breath. “Spencer?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell me everything’s going to be okay, will you?”

“Text your husband,” Reid says, giving Ed’s arm a light squeeze. Even if he weren’t in charge of dealing with a separate problem, Oswald’s leg would be a liability in this scenario, so they’re checking in with each other as often as possible. Unfortunately Ed tends to forget to do that in the heat of the moment.

***

One of the guards almost raises an alarm as the Riddler’s team come to disperse fear gas through the air conditioning system. Poison Ivy is elsewhere and her perfume supplies are limited. Gunshots are loud and things need to be calm until proper pandemonium sets in. So while the guard busy backing away from Zsasz, it’s Knifepoint who grabs him from behind.

When it’s not personal, and when there’s time, Knifepoint leaves them with a kind word. His mother was a henchperson once. He would have wanted that for her. “Shh, it’s all right. You’re safe now.” Up through the ribs where the clothes will contain a lot of the blood. Blade so sharp it sinks in quick and easy.

“You’re so sensitive, kitten,” Zsasz says when the body slumps to the floor. Knifepoint shrugs and wipes the knife on his special cloth before sheathing it again. His broken fingers are throbbing. He turned down Kali’s offer of any additional painkillers other than Tylenol, wanting to have a clear head.

“I’m about to unscrew the valve,” the Riddler announces, having connected the carefully carried canister of compressed calamity to some kind of intake pipe. Riddler has made a solemn vow to refrain from riddles while using the comm system during this operation, to avoid wasting time and patience. “Does everyone copy? It will take a few minutes to fully spread, but nonetheless, respirators. Now.”

It’s actually possible to make an invisible version of fear gas, but Jonathan adds a sulfurous yellow-green color to make it easier for himself to track. Riddler has a conversation with Garcia about where to find Jonathan before they make their way out, and by then the gas is filling the halls and the screams have begun.

A few smart employees are down near the floor, where the gas is thinnest, and are crawling towards exits. If they don’t try to stop the trio, Zsasz and Knifepoint don’t waste energy or bullets dispatching them. Little fish aren’t worth eating. Especially ones that are mostly holding on to lucidity but still whimpering and hyperventilating.

Riddler moves with single-minded focus, occasionally whacking people out of the way with his question mark cane. It’s hard to talk through these respirators anyway. You have to speak up and seriously enunciate.

The latest formula of the gas affects people different ways, depending on dosage and their own physical and mental health. Some just experience a compounded mother-of-all panic attacks. Some see their worst fears. Some become indiscriminately violent, and those Zsasz shoots or Knifepoint stabs (and occasionally shoots, when that makes more sense) as needed.

Zsasz kicks down the door that Garcia says is the correct one. Two men in scrubs are huddled in different corners weeping while a woman in a lab coat is running around in a tight circle desperately scratching at her skin and swiping invisible bugs off her body.

“Garcia says tie them up and she’ll direct Ivy and Teeth to them, as they’re high up enough to know things,” Riddler tells Zsasz, who’s brought dozens of zip ties. Teeth can drag them out into fresh air where they’ll be able to actually smell the perfume. If there’s too many, he and Ivy will make an executive decision about which ones to keep and which out of those to question, along with which to discard.

Then he turns his attention to Jonathan, who’s still strapped to the bed. Nefyn - not Knifepoint - has beaten him to it and is kneeling by Jonathan’s side. Jonathan doesn’t appear frightened per se, but there’s a wild look to him and no recognition at Nefyn’s face.

Maybe it’s the respirator. Maybe Nefyn’s voice and his pet name will help compensate. “It’s me, blue jay. Do you know me?”

Jonathan’s voice is pitched lower than normal, and there’s an odd, seasick sort of cadence to it. Not like he’s seasick, but that he’s seasickness-inducing. _“You’re unimportant._ ”

Nefyn isn’t sure what to do - other than not scream for an entirely different reason than fear - but the Riddler nudges him aside. “Am I important, Scarecrow?”

The person in the bed - maybe not Jonathan, not for now - squints suspiciously and tries to sit up. _“I…”_

“The first word’s the same, but it’s not about business and not about love. I taught you.”

_“Partner in crime. You’re the Riddler.”_

The Riddler smiles and takes a folded bit of brown cloth out of his suit jacket pocket. He unfolds it. The burlap mask. “If I release you and give you your face, Scarecrow, will you work with us?”

_“Give it to me.”_

“Will you give Jonathan back to us when we’ve left this place? You have your place and Jonathan has his. You need to swear to give him back.”

Scarecrow is definitely straining now. _“Why do you want him? He’s still pathetic, even after everything done to cure him.”_

Ridder dangles the mask enticingly. “Swear on the field where you were born. Swear. It. You get to play. Jonathan comes back when you’re done.”

He grits his teeth. _“I swear.”_

“Knifepoint, these buckles are complicated -”

No need for Riddler to finish the sentence. Knifepoint takes out his largest blade and slashes through the straps. Scarecrow grabs the mask and yanks it over his head the second his hands are free.

_“Good. I want to see the chaos, and I want to find the other one._

“That should work out nicely, then,” Riddler says, helping him to his feet. “A voice in my ear says he’s not being as amiable as you are.”

***

JC-2 is holding a whirring bone drill centimeters from Strange’s chest and has pinned him against the wall. **“Get on the table.”**

“Crane...I mean Scarecrow, surely we can…”

**“I won’t push this in quickly, Strange. And no one's coming to help you. Now you know what that feels like.”**

He complies. The original restraints have been destroyed, but JC-2 has stripped clothes from more than one of the corpses and has already used the scalpel to slice the cloth into convenient strips. There’s a vicious grace about JC-2 that would be fascinating if Strange were safely on the other side of thick glass.

There is so much screaming outside the door. JC-2 locks it. He turns off the whirring drill and returns to Strange’s side. **“No mask for you. It’s not fair. Hold still or I’ll cut off your nose. The gas should be a smaller part of the atmosphere now, and will affect you less if you didn’t get hit with the initial dose. Doesn’t mean it won’t affect you at all.”**

“No, please…” JC-2 cuts the respirator off his face, nicking his cheek in the process. Strange knows he has a matter of seconds before the effects will set in. Even if he won’t be as badly off as the people he saw in the corridors, this is not something he wants at all.

**“I thought you liked experiments, Doctor. Tell me what you feel. What you see. If you’re honest, if you’re detailed, maybe I’ll let you live. Not in one piece, of course, but - are you afraid now? Are you afraid of me?**

Strange is breathing in pure terror now, and he knows what he is afraid of, what he has pushed down under layers and layers of detachment and self-justification and denied ever dreading. “Yes. I’m afraid of you. All of you.”

Because he starts to see them in the room. 514 A. Azrael. Fish. Basil. Sid. Tweaker. Fries. Karen. Marv. Alice. Nancy. Firefly. KK-2. Panacea. And more. They are standing around this table and they have surgical instruments and clipboards and pens, audio recorders and memory wipers. They have freezing guns and flamethrowers, claws and wings and malleable faces. They have sorrow and rage.

**“Tell me what you see, and what you feel.”**

When Strange does, JC-2 laughs with twisted joy.

Strange already feels like he’s about to have a heart attack any second, then he feels like he’s genuinely going to have one. Because a second Panacea (aka Patient 5) breaks down the door. Her face underneath the respirator is smooth, but her arms, the backs of her hands, and what can be seen of her chest are covered in green prickles.

And JC-2 says, **“I got him first.”**

Maybe this is his chance. Through the thick cloud of fear and making himself ignore his pantheon of former test subjects, Strange says, “Panacea -”

“It’s Thistle now,” she snaps before completely ignoring him. Two others file into the room behind her, but Strange can’t stop looking from one of his creations to the other. “Scarecrow, I know you want vengeance. So do I. But we need to get him out of here alive.”

**“No. Leave me alone.”**

A slender man all in black and cream with a mask that looks like it’s made of old book pages says, voice surprisingly clear through his respirator, “We need him alive so that he’ll truly pay. Death is too easy.”

This gives JC-2 pause, but he shakes his head. **“He created me purely to suffer and die. I won't give him to anyone. I'd rather kill him right now than give him to anyone. You were kind, so this is your warning.”**

The book man touches something attached to his ear and says, “Get here soon; our Scarecrow is desperate.”

 **“Calling reinforcements to take me down?”** JC-2 snarls. **“I won’t give you time. Whatever he did to you, Thistle, he still brought you back to life, and you have one now. You have a real life. All my host has ever had is invasion, loneliness, torment, and exploitation. Getting fucked over and literally fucked, tricked into thinking he’d chosen it. Tricked into thinking he was a person. It’s not even about the surgery. It’s about making him at all. That is unforgivable. I'll enjoy his fear and pain, however brief I have to make it because of your interference, and then I'll end mine. I will have one shining moment of being feared and not being afraid.”** ****

Strange isn’t sure whether the next part is part of his hallucinatory overlay over reality. A creature in a hospital gown with a burlap hood over his head, eye holes and mouth all jagged, runs full tilt to JC-2’s side. JC-2 looks baffled.

_“Let’s leave and take him with us. Give him years of fear. Not just minutes.”_

**“Who are you?**

_“Scarecrow.”_

**“Fuck you, won’t you let me have that? Won’t you let me have anything at all that belongs to me?”** He tries to attack this Scarecrow with the scalpel, but Scarecrow ducks and Victor Zsasz (this surely must be part of the hallucination) grabs JC-2 in an armlock.

 _“This isn’t enjoyable as I expected.”_ Scarecrow huffs and runs off. What appears to be Edward Nygma (seriously?) as well as a young man dressed in black chase after him.

Then a girl in black and red steps into the light. She hands a nail-studded baseball bat to the book man, then takes the gun from her belt and pointedly places it on a shelf. She takes the black half-mask off her face, and despite the hiss of warning from both her companions, takes off the respirator as well. She gets down to the floor, keeping her head low, and crawls towards JC-2.

“You have things that aren’t his,” she says, before coughing violently. “Zsasz, let him go.”

“Um…” Zsasz says.

“Trust me.” She coughs some more and takes shallow breaths, but they seem intentional and not like panic. (Not like Strange, who is still surrounded and still panicking.) She starts humming to herself between words. “Meet me down here, Scarecrow.”

Zsasz cautiously lets JC-2 go but stays near. JC-2 sinks to the floor as well. “ **How are you doing that?** ”

“The person who made this gas and I figured out some ways to minimize the effects for a short time. Secret ways.” She hums some more.

 **“It always has to be about someone else, doesn’t it?”** JC-2 growls.

“I kissed him once, years ago, and he didn’t like it. I bet you’d like it. You’re a different person. Do you remember? Uh uh, you don’t get to try it until we’re outside. Is it worth hanging on for a few minutes? We won’t take Strange from you. We’ll all go outside together.”

Strange expects JC-2 to reject this immediately. Instead, JC-2 hesitates.

***

Garcia says, voice shaking a little, “Team leaders, the Court of Owls is getting ready to swoop in and ‘contain the situation’. I’m not sure what that involves, but you need to evacuate. Don’t let them know you know. I’m pretty sure they haven’t hacked this signal, but they’re watching you.”

“Roger that. Over and out,” Ed gasps, out of breath from chasing the more rational of the two Scarecrows, not that this means a lot. He’s also working hard to keep a lid on his mirror self, who is raring to go during a simultaneously stressful and exhilarating time.

Knifepoint’s already caught up with Scarecrow but hasn’t tried to tackle him. He’s just watching. Ed tries not to think about how he himself would react if Oswald was behaving like Scarecrow is now. Scarecrow is standing on a table in the middle of the employee cafeteria, watching the largest exhibition of the effects of his life’s work to date. His mask hides any facial expression, but he says with something resembling gratitude and delight, _“Which of you did this?_

“I did,” Ed says. A man runs at Ed screeching about demons, and Ed has to give him a few thwacks until he’s down. Unlike the few people Ed saw affected by the Tetch virus before it was safely destroyed, the fear serum only makes some people violent, and those that are have no finesse.

_“Thank you. It’s beautiful.”_

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, but we need to leave. Maybe we can save some of the security footage for you to observe later?”

Scarecrow turns and folds his arms in an almost funny display of petulance. _“I thought you cared about my vision. You just want him.”_

“There’s a difference between having an alter ego to protect you and do your dirty work, and having one who takes over your body and starts hiding your deceased girlfriend’s body parts in vending machines and morgue drawers.” Ed doesn’t like talking about that, but after his sentencing hearing years ago it’s a matter of public record. “I like what you bring to Jonathan’s life, Scarecrow, but Jonathan needs to actually exist in order for you to exist as well. We can, you know, ‘hang out’ later. You and me, not him and me. I’m sorry I’ve been so busy. He’s just more sedate. Easier company. It doesn’t mean I dislike yours.”

Normally Scarecrow and Jonathan are much more integrated than this during Scarecrow’s appearances, as well. The medications must help with that. Though a hint of Jonathan slips through from time to time. _“Ugh, whatever. That woman is terror-vomiting, which is rare. I need a closer look._

“Okay, blue jay, that’s enough.” Knifepoint, it turns out, has had a syringe up his sleeve all this time, and he grabs Scarecrow by the ankle and sinks it into his leg. “I’m sorry to do that, but the longer we stay here the more danger we’re in. Stop hitting me.”

“You going to be alright?” Ed asks as Knifepoint hoists Scarecrow into a fireman’s carry.

“I’ve, uh, held him up for extended periods before,” Knifepoint says. “Just take his hood so he can breathe easier.”

 _“I’ll make you see the alley man. I’ll burn you.”_ Scarecrow’s thrashing gets weaker and weaker as they head towards the exit. Now that the mask is off they can see how pale and sweaty he is.

“Kali was concerned about sedating him when he’s been sedated so much recently. This is a mixture of the active ingredients of his medications plus a muscle relaxant. Sorry I didn’t tell you. She gave it to me last-minute and -”

“A lot has been happening, don’t worry.” Ed focuses on clearing a path.

***

Duplicate Scarecrow makes it most of the way on foot, but the realities of what his body have been through lately start setting in. Thistle offers to carry him instead of Zsasz, under the theory that someone who’s been abused exclusively by men might be more willing with a woman. After a few more faltering steps, he agrees.

Once everyone has made it outside, Bridgit and Selina grudgingly agree to let Strange live and return to Gotham with them in reasonably good physical condition, but Bridgit knees him in the groin before they get him into the helicopter. Selina claps. Nobody else comments.

“You know, I have one dose of the antidote to the fear serum,” Kali tells the group as they’re all securing Strange, one of the surgeons and the lab-coated woman from Jonathan’s room (still suffering from delusory parasitosis but quieter about it), and an elderly one-armed janitor whom Ivy felt sorry for. No room for any others. They’re on the floor, but Kali’s put down some blankets. She’s treated POWs and some sentiment lingers. There aren’t enough earphones for them to wear, but she’s stuck earplugs in their ears to help them avoid damage from the helicopter sounds. “It’ll take a few hours to clear naturally.”

“Let’s give it to the janitor,” Thistle says.

Original Scarecrow might not be sedated, but he’s clearly exhausted and, after accepting a rehydration drink and a robe, lay down with his head in Nefyn’s lap and his feet in Ed’s. Everyone’s hoping this show of trust means he’ll wake up as Jonathan. Kali’s decided examining him can wait.

Duplicate Scarecrow, meanwhile, is sulking between Spencer and the wall, because the moment Harley and Ivy saw each other Ivy swept her up in a passionate and relieved embrace full of kisses. He’s refused to take Harley up on the very offer that made him agree to leave in the first place. He’s also refused to take off the surgical mask or clean up any of the blood on him - Kali insisted on laying a tarp down, though Teeth said this helicopter has seen worse.

  
**“Why is Strange living?** he grits out.

Spencer says, “Because he ordered an abduction that transported two people, one of whom is arguably a minor and is definitely documented as a mentally incompetent ward of the state, across state lines. Do you know what that means?”

He glowers at the ‘ward of the state’ part. **“I was under the impression that you were the Reader and the Riddler was the green one over there.”**

“He’s out of GCPD jurisdiction now. He’s FBI business. And if he’s FBI business, he won’t go to Blackgate or Arkham where the Court will spring him from if it wants, or where some warden can be bought off to free him. A case can be made against the Court of Owls when we get him to turn on them, which won’t be hard, and a witness to crimes sponsored by the Court of Owls can enter federal witness protection. Get a new life away from Gotham. Be his own person. That’s why. The person on the books as ‘Jonah Crane’ can stop being Jonah Crane and be someone new.”

 **“Jonah isn’t real. Why do you care? Why should I?”** Those reddened eyes demand truth.

Ed’s not going to like this, but Spencer is not going to coddle his anxieties. There’s no way to have this conversation without everyone being able to tune in on their helicopter headsets. So be it. He starts unbuttoning his trademark Reader vest that Oswald had tailored for him, and the shirt Thistle got him for his last birthday. He shows Duplicate Scarecrow what Garcia gave him to wear into the fray.

“This is my old FBI-issue bulletproof vest,” Spencer says, pointing out the few dings in it from bullets past. He didn’t get hit today, which he told Garcia to her relief. He’s not sure what it would take for her to stop loving him, and the thought humbles and disquiets him. “After my death was faked, my loved ones divided up my belongings. I didn’t bring it to Gotham with me because I was just supposed to consult on a case, not actively become involved. The friend who helped us find you was the one who’d chosen to keep it, and she gave it back to me.”

A lot of people are looking at Spencer now, but what matters is the one between him and the wall. **“So it’s because you’re still all noble inside. Hah.”**

“I didn’t say that. Let me finish. We had a case in which young men on spring break were being raped, murdered, and stuffed into hotel room closets. It turned out that a young man named Adam had been horrifically abused, and whenever he saw a man that reminded him of his abuser, Amanda would take charge. Amanda was the one avenging Adam over and over. I made sure she went to a good, humane institution that respected her gender and treated her with dignity, even though they had to keep her contained. I visited her several times. She wouldn’t let me speak to Adam. She said Adam was weak and needed her to keep him safe, and if that meant never letting him manifest again, so be it.” Spencer takes a deep breath. “If it were safe for me to go to Florida, I would still visit when I could. Because as I told her every time, Adam deserves to live.”

After a long silence, Jonathan Crane’s duplicate tears off the surgical mask and stares at it. In his normal voice, though shuddery, he asks, “What’s this? What - are we in a helicopter?”

Jonathan himself usually remembers what he did as Scarecrow and almost always has some control during the episode, but this doesn’t seem to be the case for Crane. Thistle passes a blanket down the line for Spencer to wrap around him, and Kali sends wet wipes over for the worst of the blood.

Crane stares at his hands and wipes them nervously. “What happened? Did I murder somebody? Where’s Jonathan? There’s a lot of people here.”

“You did nothing wrong; you were defending yourself. Jonathan’s asleep over there. We found both of you.” When Crane huddles against Spencer, asking more and more questions, Spencer thinks of his godson, which he doesn’t let himself do often. And presses a kiss to a shaved patch of his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Besides what Spencer said, I don't want Crane to be a cold-blooded killer. But Strange's punishment doesn't end here, don't worry.


	12. Ten For a Bird You Must Not Miss

Where Jonathan lives is easily obtainable information, while the safehouse needs to remain secret and there’s a slight possibility that the Court of Owls might trace the rescue party there. Also, trauma-counseling-trained Dr. Kali thinks “Jonah” will benefit from the familiar surroundings of the house where his mother grew up. Except she technically wasn’t his mother. And since he was made from Jonathan’s genetic material, he’s sort of Jonathan’s son and Karen Crane is sort of his grandmother. Which meant Jonathan Crane has a sort-of-son who is psychologically about three years younger than him, when you factor in the being-grown-in-a-vat and lab rat phases as well as the freezing. And has between four and five years’ worth of independent memories and personality development.

Learning all this is about as disorienting as everything else that’s happened since Zsasz showed up in her kitchen.

Garcia is directed to sit tight while the prisoners are being “processed” - better she have plausible deniability about how all that is going down - and the abducted boys settled. Candy and Leonara aren’t terrible company now that she’s less scared of them, though this realization is weird and uncomfortable. Reid lets her know he’s okay and periodically updates her on the situation.

Now that the initial relief at seeing Reid has worn off, she’s going back and forth between wanting to hug him and take him home, and wanting to get him arrested. And, like, given the most lenient sentence possible and counseling and stuff, maybe use his mom’s schizophrenia as leverage, but, you know. Because if all these people like him this much, what the hell has he been doing? It’s not like Harley, who might potentially be telling the truth of being a spared witness.

He’s still her lifeline in Gotham, though, and she follows his directions. The morning after the rescue, Reid calls and tells her to pack her bags and let the Zsaszettes get her to a drop-off point, where she’ll be picked up by a different car. He also tells her that this wasn’t his idea, but not to be frightened, which has the exact opposite effect. Especially since the drop-off point is in the middle of a dingy alley.

Also, the unassuming black car she gets into is being driven by Oswald Cobblepot, in one of his trademark suits complete with purple driving gloves. He smiles and it looks real, as it generally does with psychopaths. At least Nygma was once a good person who snapped under the effects of abuse, severe mental illness, and bullying. He profiles as an attention-seeker trying to fill a void with people’s shock and awe. According to her research, Cobblepot started his mob affiliation in his teens. He profiles as a power-seeker trying to fill a void with more and more of himself. (Except that sounds sexual when she says that in her head, which, no.)

He starts the car up right away. “Ms. Penelope Garcia, I want to thank you personally for your assistance.”

“You’re, uh, you’re welcome?”

“I’m prepared to give you compensation as thanks. Ed is very attached to Jonathan, and I’m fond of him myself. Plus we’ve already paid for his first semester of medical school and chasing after a refund would have been inconvenient.”

Garcia blinks. “I didn’t know you liked him THAT much.”

“Well, Jonathan’s agreed that when he’s a qualified psychiatrist he’ll get a job in Arkham. I think you understand why this is worth investment. Also he took a bullet for Ed less than a month ago.” He glances at her face. “You didn’t know?”

“No.” She hopes she doesn’t sound too shocked. He might take offense.

All that happens is a scoff. “Bad people have loved ones too,” he says tartly.

“I know that.” Very few UnSubs Garcia’s helped catch have cared about nobody at all.

“What would be the most convenient way for me to untraceably give you ten thousand dollars?”

She’s busy looking out the window. Gotham looks like such a normal city in daylight, if heavy on the retro architecture. It takes her a moment to process what he said. “Wait. Wait. What?”

“I’d offer more, but I’ve just paid my employees and Zsasz in particular does not come cheap.” It’s almost funny how obediently he obeys both the red light and the right-of-way.

“I didn’t do it for money! I did it because one of them’s basically an innocent child, the other one still didn’t deserve to be in Strange’s clutches, and the Court of Owls is, like, cartoonishly evil overlord creepy! Who knows what they would do if they could make more clones like that?”

Cobblepot taps the steering wheel thoughtfully. “So...you wouldn’t be up for...a regular paycheck, as it were?”

“No.” _Reid said not to be scared. Reid said not to be scared._

“Really?”

“Really.”

He shrugs nonchalantly and Garcia breathes normally again. “Worth a try. I must remind you that you’ve still done enough crime for our sake that we could get you in a tremendous amount of trouble if you were to -”

She wants to bang her fists on the car dash but resists. “I get it. I leave Gotham, I don’t come back, I don’t try to talk to what used to be one of my best friends and the closest thing I’ve ever had to a little brother, and whatever story I tell to get Strange locked up and his victim safe and happy doesn’t implicate you.”

“See, you’re quick on the uptake. Such a shame you have to be all uncorrupt. It’s frustrating when that happens, though I must say around here it doesn’t happen very often.”

Garcia just folds her arms. The rest of the drive is in tense silence.

Until they’re out on the very fringes of the municipal area, when Cobblepot says quietly, “Strange tortured me too, you know.”

It probably takes a lot out of him to sound so vulnerable, but it’s going to take a lot more for her to feel much pity for someone involved in reprogramming Reid. “I know.”

“He threatened to lobotomize Ed if Ed didn’t toe the line.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t known that, but it’s far too believable. Shiver.

“Are you getting anything out of this at all? Ed or Spencer cut a deal?”

Garcia wonders how much longer until she can escape this car. “The Reader’s never going to kill again. He promised. Is that going to be a problem with you?”

“I’m not particularly inconvenienced by that, no. He doesn’t kill very often anyway. His main value to me is babysitting Ed, especially when he’s being reckless or has been...not feeling well.” That has to be a euphemism for psychotic. “Don’t tell him I said that. He gets contrary when he feels like he’s being fussed over.”

The awkward silence resumes until they get to the farmhouse with a large barn near it and multiple cars parked in front. A boy who looks like a cancer patient version of the Jonathan Crane she’s seen in photos is sitting on the front stoop, wrapped in a blanket and wearing a hand-crocheted blue and gray beanie despite it being a warm day. Reid is sitting next to him, a large hardback book propped on his thighs to serve as a table for the beautiful stationery he’s writing on with a fountain pen. Cobblepot waves to him and heads around the house, presumably to another entrance.

“What’s that?” she blurts out, indicating Reid’s writing.

“My letter to Mom for yesterday, which I accidentally skipped. I’ll get to today’s after dinner.” Reid looks up at her calmly. “Yes, I know she’s dead.”

Garcia is not touching that one with a twenty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole. She turns to the precious frail woodland creature. “You must be...what do you want me to call you?”

He looks surprised to be asked. “I don’t want to be called ‘Crane’ anymore, I think, because I almost maybe stopped being my own person, depending how the upload went. I don’t want to be ‘Jonah’, because that was just for Arkham’s convenience. I’m talking to Reid about names that start with ‘J’ and what they all mean. If I go into Witness Protection, do you think I’ll get to pick my first name?”

“If I have any say in it, sweetie. Do you like hugs?”

He gets to his feet in a disarmingly wobbly way, like seeing a fawn stand up for the first time. Garcia knows Strange had him probed like the captive of cliche aliens, and that if you want to do that to someone, you can’t let them have much in their digestive system. And he was already painfully thin to start. He gets up on his own power, though, and he hugs her tight. “Thank you, Ms. Garcia.”

She squeezes as tight as she can without squishing him. In some ways, this is a reset Jonathan Crane, one who hasn’t done worse than non-violently assist his emotionally abusive, manipulative father and has paid more than enough for it - and didn’t actually do it, just remembers doing it.  One who doesn’t have to become like the other one. One she can save from himself as well as everyone else. “Penelope. Please.”

“Okay, Penelope. Reid says you’re going to help us figure out what to tell the FBI?”

“Yes.” She looks at Reid, who’s now standing and about to open the door. “I have to say, even if your cousin and in-law don’t like it, it’ll be a lot easier if you let me get one more person onboard. He doesn’t work for the BAU anymore - lost the stomach for it kinda because of you, actually - but he’s still FBI. I think that’ll work in our favor, since this isn’t a BAU-type thing.”

Reid fidgets uncomfortably. “Maybe it would be best if I didn’t see him?”

The Undecided J-name is still hugging her and pressing the side of his face against her chest. She lightly rubs his back. Her hugs are stuff of legend, if she says so herself. “Maybe. He’s not going to be as easy-going about this as me.”

“But you think he’ll help?”

“Who?” J-name asks. Still hugging. Maybe they’ll have to shuffle in together. Garcia doesn’t want to push him away.

“Another old friend of mine,” Reid says. “My other one who knows I’m not dead.”

“I can convince him, I think.”

“You smell nice,” J-name murmurs, in a shell-shocked young’un way, not a leering way. He does let go so that they can all enter the house.

The house is tidy, rustic in aesthetic while not actually being rustic. The wooden floorboards are partly covered in rugs and the couch is covered in twentysomethings. The original Jonathan Crane leaves his spot sandwiched between Nefyn and Harley and approaches her. He’s not as fragile-looking as the other one, but he’s still skinny, and there’s something wrung-out behind his blue eyes. His glasses, which she didn’t see him wearing in the laboratory video feed, are slightly lopsided.

Reid has neither confirmed nor denied that Jonathan has murdered seventeen people, and Garcia knows for a fact that the horrifying biochemical weapon she’d allowed on her watch to be unleashed on dozens of people is Jonathan’s creation. But she’s also seen footage of him tied to a bed, screaming and crying, and she’s seen him dissociated into the very dark and ugly thing that tormented him. Like Tobias Hankel. No wonder Reid can’t quite hate him.

Jonathan bows to her, legit bows Japanese-style. Reid said that like him, Jonathan doesn’t shake hands if he can help it. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“You’re welcome,” Garcia says, because what else can she say?

“HEY CROW BRO, SOMETHING’S WRONG WITH THE SINK!” shouts Ivy from upstairs. Jonathan nods at Garcia and heads over to help.

“Before I forget, is Thistle here?” Garcia asks.

He startles in a way that confirms something. “No, why?”

She hands him a note in a sealed envelope. “Give this to her, will you please? No peeking.” She doesn’t think she’s going to have a chance to give it to her in person, and she ends up being right.

(Though Reid does hug her goodbye. She can tell he’s barely not crying. His voice cracks when he tells her to be a really, really, really good godparent to Henry, to make up for how bad of a one he’s being.)

***

_Amethyst “Thistle” Smith, Strange’s files included the date of your re-birthday. You also said your friends say your default hand-to-hand fighting style resembles Muay Thai, but with less elbow striking. I took those two tibits and took a crack at it._

_You weren’t far off: Amy Simouansai, daughter of Singh Simouansai, member of a Lao farming community that sells organically grown vegetables and wild mushrooms throughout the tri-state area. Hey, I’ve known a few half-Southeast Asians you’d never guess in a million years, and they didn’t even have green spikes. Singh coaches amateur Muay Lao matches for festivals. That’s all I could find on short notice._

_Do want you want with this info. Be an awesome bodyguard. Please tend to our wunderkind._

***

Harvey’s just finished reading Cassie her bedtime story and clicked her bedroom door shut behind him when the doorbell rings. Jim beats him to it, but Harvey approaches anyway because it would be just his luck for Jim to get shot down in his own foyer.

“He showed a badge,” Jim says as he undoes the bolt.

“It could be a fake badge,” Harvey says. “Don’t roll your eyes at me; Essen died because of fake uniforms.”

“What’s going on?” Lee calls as she emerges from the basement. She keeps insisting on changing his sheets, says it’s healthy. It’s a three-story brownstone in a relatively safe part of Gotham, and they tell everyone that miserable bachelor Harvey sublets the basement so that they can all afford to live there. In reality he only sleeps down there when he’s in disgrace.

Jim opens the door a crack. “Yes?”

He’s a black guy around Jim’s age, maybe, not wearing a suit but still on the business casual side. It looks like he's bald on purpose. “Derek Morgan, FBI. I have a few questions for Captain James Gordon, Dr. Leslie Thompkins, and Commissioner Harvey Bullock, if they’re home.”

Harvey swings around and mouths to Lee, _Google him!_

Lee holds up her phone, mouths, _done_ , and gives a thumbs-up. They’ve all gotten more paranoid since Cassie was born, and right around when Harvey and Jim got larger targets painted on their backs. She’s not literally Harvey’s, sure, but he’s the one who pushed her parents into getting back together after Lee had time to heal from Mario and forgive Jim. Does his relationship with her parents make him count as stepdad?

When Jim opens the door wider, it isn’t just Morgan who enters. So does Jonathan Crane, looking peakier than the last time Harvey saw him, and apparently wears glasses these days.

Harvey holds up a hand. “Whoa! We didn’t say he could come in!”

...And so does another Jonathan Crane, who looks even worse off and is wearing a blue and gray striped beanie.

“Quick, punch them to see which one’s Clayface,” Harvey tells Jim.

“Neither of us is Clayface,” the Cranes chorus. Great.

“Sorry to impose,” Morgan says. “It’s to help you understand the importance of the case.”

“Let’s all take a seat,” Lee suggests.

“Hi, Dr. Thompkins,” four-eyes Jonathan says with a little wave. Nobody seems to hate Lee except cuckoobananas Barbara Kean. Even Valeska left her alive after taking her hostage back in the day, when he didn’t have to. Harvey hopes Cassie inherited whatever genes are responsible for that, rather than her dad’s piss-off-everyone mutation.

“I’ve heard you’ve all met Jonathan,” Morgan says as he settles into the indicated chair. “This is ‘Jonah Crane’ according to forged Arkham records. It’s not his preference, but we’ll be using it in the context of this case.”

Jonah takes the rocking chair where Cassie used to love being rocked while nursing. “The records say I’m Jonathan’s crazy fratricidal twin, but that’s not true. I have all Jonathan’s memories up until Detective Gordon killed Dad. Jonathan’s neurologist at the hospital hooked him up to, like, a memory hard drive.”

“Strange cloned you,” Jim says immediately, and it takes a moment but Harvey sifts through years of weirdness to recall the time Bruce Wayne got swapped out for awhile before Alfred noticed. Lee nudges Jim and Jim adds, “I’m also very sorry about your father.”

“Mm,” Jonah says, rocking. Jonathan looks at him from his own chair with more concern and tenderness than Harvey knows how to deal with in the context of this particular kid’s face.

“This about you Feds scooping up Strange day before yesterday?” Harvey and Lee are now sitting on Jim’s either side on the couch, their power pose as it were.

Morgan nods. “We’re opening an investigation into the Court of Owls. It would help if any of you would be willing to speak to our team. This is an advance courtesy call because I realize that this could potentially be dangerous for you.”

“Oh God,” Harvey groans.

Lee turns to Jonah, who is also hugging himself as well as rocking. “Arkham records?”

“When Indian Hill was being evacuated Strange froze me instead of trying to take me anywhere when it was so chaotic already, and when he was safely set up outside Gotham he sent instructions to Warden Reed to thaw me out and ‘look after’ me until Strange was ready for Phase 2.” He starts looking at the floor instead of vaguely in the couch’s direction. “Which got interpreted as keeping me in solitary except for meals, ice baths, electric shocks, using my phobia for punishment, and making me let him fuck me if I wanted anything. Like more than one blanket. You know, luxuries.”

Lee gasps. Harvey remembers that warden supposedly dying in a car accident two weeks ago. Funny enough. An awful silence ticks by for six full seconds. Jonathan eventually adds, “Does anybody inspect Arkham _at all_?”

“That’s not what we’re really focusing on right now, but it’s a question worth asking,” Morgan says evenly. “Strange was apprehended after abducting Jonathan and experimenting on both at once. Jonathan’s friends called in a tip, and it’s become clear that the Court of Owls was funding Strange and that they’d ordered him to do all this in the first place. The rest is currently classified.”

“Systems update,” Jonah says before giggling hysterically. Jonathan puts a hand lightly on his arm until he stops.

“As I said, I know that speaking out against the Court of Owls could be risky. But -”

“I’m in,” Lee says, predictably. “I don’t know as much as those two, though, I was just around for some of the Tetch virus plot.”

Jim looks at Jonah. “Why you two?”

“We’re glow-in-the-dark mice,” Jonah says, as if that’s perfectly clear. “I know that our dad was shooting at you and that I wasn’t technically there, or, like, in existence, but I remember seeing you do it and it’s really putting me on edge.”

Jim does his heroic grimace and pledges his help, too. Harvey grits his teeth and says, “Lee, if Jim’s gonna, then you shouldn’t. We need one of us not to be on the hit list if this goes sideways, and I’m more useful. In this context, I mean.” Cassie needs at least one of them.

“In THIS context,” she says, playful for a second before getting back to business. “That makes sense, Harvey. I agree. What’s going to happen to you, Jonah?”

“I’m leaving Gotham,” he says slowly, like he can’t believe it. “New home, new name.”

***

“I don’t want you to call me Amy,” Thistle says after she’s read Garcia’s note and passed it to Spencer. They’re at his cottage and on his worn but comfortable sofa, limbs braided to keep from falling off.

“Then I won’t.” He places his note on the table without getting up from their horizontal configuration. She’s shaved more extensively than usual for more available touching surface area. “Are you interested in contacting your father?”

“Maybe. I’m gonna try to find videos in Lao and see if I understand them. That’s fun and uncomplicated. Not so sure about family. I don’t think I’m the person he’d want, not anymore. I think you know what that’s like.”

“Yeah, I do,” he sighs.

She noses at his collarbone. His loose-fitting Vulcan salute t-shirt - this being the one place he’ll wear t-shirts, not counting undershirts - is askew. “I like who you are now.”

“Same to you.” He likes how straightforward she is, how curious in both senses of the word, how she doesn’t ignore her trauma yet is so positive about her present. He doesn’t know if he’s in love with her, but he doesn’t necessarily need to know, or to be. She gets enough of that from her official boyfriend to be happy regardless.

“I will take care of you for her, by the way. Lord knows you need it.”

“Do I?” When he runs his hand down her clothed back he can feel the prickles underneath. Strange called her _Panacea_. A cure for all ailments. There’s no such thing, of course, unless you count death. Her liver metabolizes poison with near perfect efficiency, but she’s just as mortal as everyone else who’s ever mattered to him.

“I’ll be more discreet about the bite marks this time,” she declares, taking off his glasses. She sets them on the table. His mind slows and quiets when she takes hold of his wrists and gently presses them back against the cushions.

He spares a thought for the unlikely young man he likely won’t see again, whom he’s told he can be what he wants to be and that he’s in the best hands possible. He tries not to think about other people he likely won’t see again.

Then he’s preoccupied with other matters. There are cures for some things.

***

“Thank you for helping,” Jonathan says as he and Nygma get the second mattress shoved into place on the floor of the living room. “It beats sleeping bags.”

“You’re welcome. What exactly am I helping with? Been a bit of a whirlwind.” Nygma moves to the pile of blankets and pillows on the couch and coffee table. He starts handing them to Jonathan. He happened to be passing by on his way to taunt Batman with be-riddled booby traps in key locations, in part to keep Batman out of his husband’s hair for the weekend, and offered to assist with the party preparations.

Thankfully, the mattresses already have fitted sheets on them. Jonathan explains, “We asked him what he wants for his last night in Gotham that is actually possible for us to achieve. He was embarrassed at first, but we got it out of him. Teeth was nice enough to vacate for the night. And hide all the weapons. Harley’s dog-sat for him before, so the beagle isn’t an issue.”

“Are you going to be alright in your old house?” Nygma adjusts his glasses.

Jonathan adjusts his own as a reflex. He’s glad he was wearing contacts when they went to the cemetery, as he tends to do whenever he thinks there’s a possibility of having to run or fight, but Strange’s people weren’t the most attentive at letting him take them out on a regular basis. It was barely worth noting at the time, but once he reached safety he realized how much his eyes disliked the results. He doesn’t want to wear contacts for awhile. “I won’t be alone.”

“Is he around?”

Jonathan gestures in the direction of the field where the scarecrow used to be before Jonathan came back and wrecked it. “He’s having a picnic with Nefyn, Harley, and Ivy. I’m joining them in a second.”

“Would it be appropriate for me to say goodbye?”

“Um.” Jonathan thinks this might hurt Nygma’s feelings, but he thinks it might need saying. “He’s frightened of you because of how you treat Reid.”

Nygma stands there with his mouth slightly open for a second. Then he slumps. “I see.”

“Reid could have run off with Garcia, you know. Maybe it’s time to trust him more?”

Nygma stands there with his mouth reconfigured into a thin line. Jonathan puts his arms around him. “Are you still badly shaken up?” Nygma asks, daring to squeeze slightly.

“Enough to actually seek out physical contact from people I'm emotionally close to, so I suppose yes. I have therapy the day after tomorrow.”

“Good.”

It’s convenient that Jonathan is still feeling touchy-feely tonight, because after the picnic and playing with Teeth’s dog, the dog is banished and the key event commences.

As in, everyone changes into sleepwear and makes a cozy fort on the floor, complete with canopy. Usually Jonathan wouldn’t be up for a ‘cuddle puddle’, as Ivy calls it, but for once it’s grounding and what he needs. He’s still sticking to the outside, though, tucked against Nefyn, who is holding his hand but otherwise not too entangled.

“You’re pretty easy to please, baby bird,” Ivy tells the guest of honor. She becomes the big spoon to Harley so Harley can drape an arm over him. Nefyn’s slung a leg over him.

“I’m going to miss you.” He’s already packed his meager possessions: the clothes he’d been wearing, the clothes the others got him, a Crane family photo album, and the Ravenclaw pride hat Jonathan had already been working on but is now his. Kali shaved the rest of his hair so it will all grow back at the same rate.

There’s a chorus of replies, though Jonathan suspects the others agree that it’s for the best. Gotham is not a place for the innocent. It’s a miracle Harley’s stayed as innocent as she has. One measly murder so far, and the guy was hitting her.  

“Kali can stay in touch with you the easiest,” Nefyn says. “She doesn’t have a criminal record, so she’ll be safe from the Feds, and she didn’t go in the building like the rest of us did, so she’s safer from the Owls.”

“Have I gotten you all into a lot of trouble?”

Harley makes a sound of exaggerated woe. “If only we were all badasses who could easily handle trouble!”

“Okay. Thank you.” After a pause he says, shyly, “I’ve picked a first name.”

Ivy grins and reaches over to poke him. “Ooh, you gotta spill. I had to pick a name when registering for Gotham U. I’m Pamela Isley at school. Penguin made sure they can’t prove she’s the same person as Ivy Pepper.”

“Sexy librarian spectacles are involved,” Harley says dreamily.

“I like how it sounds and Reid said it means _young_ , so: Julian.”

“Nice to meet you, Julian,” Jonathan says. His throat suddenly hurts. He sits up to grab the water he has stashed nearby.

Nefyn looks at him with concern, but he knows this isn’t the time to pry about feelings. Instead he says, “How’d you teach Harley to increase her resistance to the fear gas?”

Jonathan takes a gulp of water before replying. “Hadn’t had time to suggest it to you yet, Nefyn. Low dose, then inject with antidote while playing a specific song. Repeat. She sings or hums the song, which her mind now associates with the soothing effect of the Paper Crane drug.”

“When he says repeat, he means we did it forty-six times,” Harley clarifies. “But you all have superpowers or Zsasz training or something? So I had to have some kind of edge? You know?”

Ivy kisses her neck. “Yeah, I think I’ll pass. Related, though, I did a thing.”

“A thing,” Jonathan repeats deadpan.

“Yes, a thingy thing, and from what Cat overheard when she was sneaking around where they’re keeping Strange, I think it worked. So Strange was hallucinating when Thistle and Zsasz brought him to me, right? And you know that hypothesis of yours, Jonathan, the one we’ve never tried out?”

Jonathan thinks for a few seconds before replying, “You mean that if you used a very large dose of your perfume on someone who’d immediately beforehand already been dosed with…”

“That what I said would be long-term. Yeah. I asked Geek Uncle first if in Strange’s current condition, if he was like that all the time, would he be fit to stand trial? He said yes.” She whispers, “So I told Strange to _never recover_.”

Julian starts laughing. He keeps laughing. He keeps laughing until everyone’s concerned. Harley kisses his cheek and says, “Deep breaths.”

“Sorry, sorry, it’s just - it’s so perfect, thank you, I love you all.” Julian coughs. “What’s the song you played to Harley?”

“‘A Murder of One’ by Counting Crows,” Jonathan says. “Which guess I briefly wasn’t.”

Nefyn strokes Jonathan's knuckles with his thumb. “Aww.”

“I don’t get it,” Ivy says.

“A group of crows is called a murder,” Julian says. “I remember learning that. How does it go?”

Harley pulls a blanket over herself and the people she’s sandwiched between. Nefyn does the same for himself and Jonathan. Harley explains, “We didn’t do the whole song, because it’s long. The lyrics include an adapted version of an old counting rhyme that often goes up to seven, including this time, but it can go up to ten. It’s normally about magpies, but this time it’s about…”

“Counting crows?” Julian rolls over and smiles at him.

“You got all my smarts, at least,” Jonathan says, his throat dry all over again.

***

In the years to come, through remedial high school and copious therapy while in a halfway house, into cautious steps towards independent adulthood, through art school, onwards to a thoroughly ironic but satisfying career as a police sketch artist, Julian Gazza will listen to this song when he misses the people who saved him.

He doesn’t know any of that yet, though. All he knows is soft lighting, warmth, and closeness, real, not fantasized skin against his and real, not implanted memories of his own.

[Jonathan plays the track, and Julian closes his eyes.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ePfsdr94ow)

_Blue morning, blue morning_

_Wrapped in strands of fist and bone_

_Curiosity, kitten_

_Doesn't have to mean you're on your own_

_You can look outside your window_

_He doesn't have to know_

_We can talk awhile, baby_

_We can take it nice and slow_

_All your life is such a shame, shame, shame_

_All your love is just a dream, dream, dream_

_Well, are you happy where you're sleepin'?_

_Does he keep you safe and warm?_

_Does he tell you when you're sorry?_

_Does he tell you when you're wrong?_

_Well I've been watching you for hours_

_It's been years since we were born_

_We were perfect when we started_

_I've been wondering where we've gone_

_All your life is such a shame, shame, shame_

_All your love is just a dream, dream, dream_

_Well, I dreamt I saw you walking_

_Up a hillside in the snow_

_Casting shadows on the winter sky_

_As you stood there counting crows_

_One for sorrow, two for joy_

_Three for girls and four for boys_

_Five for silver, six for gold_

_Seven for a secret never to be told_

_But there's a bird that nests inside you_

_Sleeping underneath your skin_

_Yeah, when you open up your wings to speak_

_I wish you'd let me in_

 

“That’s where I would always stop it,” Jonathan says, doing so.

“That’s a good place,” Julian agrees.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- "Barbara Gordon" from the comics wouldn't work as a name here, so named her Cassandra in tribute to one of the other Batgirls. 
> 
> -I'd never heard of the song until I was researching the usually-about-magpies rhyme, which I first encountered in Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics. I also came across the 8, 9, 10 lines during research, which seem to be less common. 
> 
> \- "Gazza" is Italian for "magpie".
> 
> Thank you for reading. What did you think? <3


	13. (Bonus)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought about making this a separate fic, but had neither the details nor spoons. So here's a nice little after-credits-ish thing. 
> 
> emetophobes, tread carefully

ARKHAM ASSAULT INCIDENT REPORT

PERPETRATOR: Patient Jervis Tetch

VICTIM: Dr. Jonathan Crane

FILED BY: Nurse Zelda Kohler

ADDITIONAL WITNESS(ES): Dr. Harleen Quinzel

SUMMARY:  
After many hostile but otherwise unremarkable sessions, Tetch hypnotically compelled Dr. Crane to go swallow a bottle of pills if he liked them so much. Crane used his pharmacy access privileges and did so. I found Crane on the floor approximately twenty minutes afterwards, vomiting and incoherent. The poisoning was too severe to treat in-house. I called 911 as well as Dr. Quinzel, his first emergency contact. I was unable to accompany them to Gotham General, but was informed the next day that Crane required a partial liver transplant. Fortunately, they already knew a perfect match for a living donation.

Crane has a month's medical leave. Tetch will be in solitary for a week, and will be reassigned to a different psychiatrist/psychotherapist team.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only fair for Julian to be able to give back. Jonathan won't even need immunosuppressants.
> 
> Nurse Kohler is from irisbleufic's excellent [Close to Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14039049/chapters/32336418).


	14. (Expanded Bonus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the author ends up writing out some of the moments implied in the previous chapter, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Besides, I wanted to show how the boys are doing all these years on. 
> 
> Sorry about the use of past tense instead of present tense. I got quite a ways in before I remembered the tense of the rest of the fic, and felt overwhelmed by the prospect of going back and revising. I have a lot going on right now. Thank you for your understanding.

“Miss Quinzel?”

“Dr. Quinzel,” Harley snapped, more vehemently than she usually did. Even Ivy showing up with supplies and a shoulder to cry on hadn’t taken away from the hours of sitting in a hard plastic chair under the weight of glaring lights and seemingly endless panic. Ivy put an arm around her waist.

The middle-aged M.D. nodded apologetically. He looked tired too, even if his darker skin tone didn’t show bags under his eyes. “Jonathan, if I may call him that, has had an unusual reaction due to his medical history. He's been stabilized, but it’s not going to last long. To put it bluntly - one doctor to another - if he doesn’t receive a transplant of enough new liver tissue within three to four days…”

“Is he conscious?” Ivy asked. “Can she talk to him?”

“I was about to say that he’s requested it.”

Harley accepted a kiss from her girlfriend before following Jonathan’s physician. Arkham’s employee health insurance wasn’t that great. However, psychiatry plus low-key supervillainy was a lucrative combination and Jonathan didn’t spend much. This meant Harley had no compunction against getting him the fanciest private hospital room available.

Except it didn’t matter once she was alone with this feeble, gray-tinged ghost who was her best friend, who’d saved her life, who was by her side at both her legal and illegal jobs.

“Hi,” he murmured, staying horizontal. She didn’t know the names of any of the machines attached to him and keeping him alive for now, she just knew there were too many. “Scarecrow’s coming, be concise.”

Harley pulled up the visitor’s chair right by his side. She selfishly wished he wanted to hold hands. “How are you?”

“They pumped my stomach,” Jonathan said matter-of-factly.

She let out a nervous giggle rather than start crying again. “I’m surprised there was anything left to pump.”

“It’s fuzzy. I think I vomited on Nurse Kohler. Apologize for me. Y’know, the staff here thinks it was a suicide attempt. I told them the truth but they don’t believe me. Not sure they fully believe I’m the top psychiatrist at Arkham. Ableist.” Jonathan sounded mildly irritated at most.

Jonathan had been babbling between bouts of retching, which was how Zelda and Harley had learned it was Jervis Tetch who made him do it. He hadn't been coherent enough to give them any idea how the hell Tetch had done it. A special mix of pills and injections, some of them secretly fine-tuned by Jonathan himself, seemed to have neutralized the hypnotist while still leaving him alert enough to engage in regular activities, if a tad drowsily. It was more humane than previous isolating and silencing measures which prevented Tetch from getting any kind of genuine treatment. _An asylum is not the same as an oubliette where people get tossed and left to rot,_ Jonathan had growled once at the board of directors when they gave him flak for it. None of them had figured out the connection between people who pissed Jonathan off and had mysterious psychotic breaks not long after, as Scarecrow was good at covering his tracks, but they were unnerved by the unusually strong display of emotion.

Harley yanked her mind back to the present. “Have, uh, have they told you?”

“What, my prognosis? Yes.” Jonathan’s gaze went from Harley to empty space. “I’d like to see Nefyn, after you. I think he’s working tonight...”

“I’ll text him.” It occurred to Harley that Nefyn couldn’t torture someone for very long before he gave himself a child-abuse flashback. So if Jonathan died, Harley would give Tetch to Nygma. With a green bow around his neck. The Riddler would be happy to take full responsibility. Besides, Jonathan wasn’t close to a lot of people, and some of them, like Nygma, wouldn’t be able to safely visit him, because…

Because…

Because some people couldn’t make their association with Jonathan known…

“What?” Jonathan asked.

She couldn’t breathe, but this time from hope. “I need to ...call...your GP...right away.”

***

Julian Gazza was having a nearly perfect evening. Dora agreed it was better to watch a comedy at home tonight rather than go to see a movie in a crowded, stressful theater downtown and risk setting off their respective PTSD. They were all snuggled up in front of the TV with fruit instead of popcorn. Julian would never get tired of being able to eat fresh produce whenever he wanted. Then his ringtone went off.

“If it’s work, tell them you’re doing something more important, _querido_ ,” Dora said. She was unfairly gorgeous in his old t-shirt and her new pajama pants with her frizzy dark hair all over the place, and her smirk was even worse. She popped another apple cube in her mouth.

“People rarely need a forensic artist right this second,” Julian agreed, but he picked up his phone. When he saw the codename in his caller ID, he unceremoniously shoved his fiancee off him.

She caught herself before she tumbled off the sofa. “Ow, where are you going?”

He untangled himself as quickly as he could. “I’m sorry, it’s even more important. And private. Keep watching if you want.”

Dora's frown shifted to a concerned one. “I’ll pause. Are you okay?”

“Fine!” He ran to the bedroom and locked the door behind him, his hands shaking. “Dr. Kali?”

She sounded calm, but like she was trying to sound calm. “Sorry to disturb you, Julian. He needs you. Well, part of you, not more than you can spare, if you get my drift. I can have the official request sent to a hospital near you, but will you agree?” Whenever she communicated with him, she stayed vague for everyone’s safety, both from the police and any remaining Court of Owls members.

“I’ve had the paperwork and all possible preliminary tests and screenings ready to go for years now, Kali. Done all the research, have the sick leave saved up. ”

“Really?”

He huffed a self-deprecating laugh. “What else is something like me good for? It’s basic sci-fi. In case the day ever came, I wanted to be ready.” Jonathan hadn’t intended to give Julian his existence. He’d intentionally, and at great personal risk, given Julian his life.

Dora would be disappointed about canceling their weekend plans, but she’d understand his need to help his ‘distant relative’. Also, an advantage of meeting each other in a sexual abuse survivors’ support group was being used to each other bolting from romantic situations for far less pleasant reasons. He could be a lot more open with her than most when it came to what really counted.

“You need to have it out in less than forty-eight hours,” Kali warned him. “Ideally much less.”

“I’m very fast at packing. It’s nothing, seriously. I’ve been borrowing from him all this time.”

***

Kali took over Jonathan’s care after the successful surgery. She and Reid, working together, determined that Jonathan didn’t actually need the immunosuppressants he’d been prescribed, as his body was treating Julian’s cells as simply more of his own. Kali donated them to an illegal but ethical clinic she knew about. She sent Julian a thank-you card on Jonathan’s behalf.

Nefyn insisted on taking a month off all work to look after Jonathan, though at least he was willing to alternate between Jonathan’s inherited farmhouse and his apartment in the city. Jonathan did some contract work for Nygma to keep from total idleness. He also did an evaluation at the GCPD’s request.

This resulted in an unfortunate exchange with young, blonde, and sharp Melissa Starr from the _Gawking Gothamite_ tabloid, who ambushed him on his way out of the courthouse. Oswald had some of _The Gotham Gazette_ and the TV networks on his payroll, and so anything involving Jonathan through there was tightly controlled, but tabloids hadn’t seemed worth their while. After some relatively innocuous, if irritating questions, she brought up the following:

1\. Whether Jonathan was on medical leave (Yes, but I was asked specifically to help with this urgent case.)

2\. Why? (Surgery.)

3\. What from? (Was assaulted by a patient and severely injured.)

4\. But you look great! (Injuries don’t necessarily affect the face.)

5\. What happened? (Doctor/patient confidentiality continues to apply.)

6\. Rumors that this was a cover for a suicide attempt (There’s rumors about everything, and it wasn’t.)

7\. Rumors that Jonathan used to be an Arkham patient (No.)

8\. Rumors that some of the current patients at Arkham had allegedly seen another patient who looked exactly like Jonathan before he started working there (While I was in high school, college, medical school, or my residency? I think not.)

9\. Rumors that this patient...was a twin brother. (I don’t have a twin brother, and this is getting absurdly personal.)

10\. Family must be a sensitive subject. (No more questions.)

***

“You didn’t tell anyone you were coming to talk to me, right?” Melissa’s informant asked, glancing around nervously. “I know we’re in a secluded alley, but it’s broad daylight.”

Melissa put a soothing hand on his arm. She’d gotten another death threat in the mail yesterday, though more polite than the others, and she wasn’t going to lose her chance at working for a real news outlet just because everyone else got cold feet. “I wasn’t followed, and I have a lot of experience at not being followed. Besides, someone would hear a gunshot from here, even with a silencer. Though I hope it doesn’t come to that!”

“Crane has powerful friends,” the informant whispered. “That whole Arkham upgrade campaign he’s been spearheading has another side to it, a dark side.”

“I know, especially with that doppelganger thing! Like, whoa, what’s up with that? What can you tell me about it?”

“I’m sorry.” He sighed, and his face turned from fear to something more like pity. “You got involved, and they’ve been through enough. I did warn you.”

She didn’t feel the knife.

***

Having learned that Julian was refusing money, Ed decided to send him a carefully chosen, beautiful sculpture of Prometheus. Behind several layers of anonymity, of course. Spencer said Julian would easily figure out it was Ed.

“I don’t mind,” Ed replied as he was winding bubble wrap around it. He was at Spencer’s place because Oswald (who was having a high pain day and wanted to stay home) was conducting business with people Ed didn’t feel like dealing with. “As long as nobody else does, and he understands the reference.”

“I don’t,” Thistle piped up, poking her head out of Spencer’s library with a book under one arm.

Spencer slid into his professor voice and breakneck expository pace. “Prometheus was a hero in Greek mythology who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. As punishment, he was chained to a rock and condemned to have an eagle eat his liver every day, only for it to regrow every night. In some myths, he was eventually freed by Heracles, whom the Romans called Hercules. He’s often used as a metaphor for someone whose actions, generally discovery or innovation, benefit humanity, but who suffers for it. Mary Shelley’s alternate title for _Frankenstein_ was _The Modern Prometheus_.”

“Ohhh, maybe I did know that.” Thistle cocked her head. “And livers do grow back, sort of, if there’s enough to start with. Mine didn’t need to do that. Did they know? The Greeks?”

“I doubt it,” Ed said. “Toss me tape, somebody?”

“Speaking of punishment, Harley said she’s going to have Tetch dealt with through internal means,” Spencer said carefully. He hadn’t tried to stop Ed from killing people when he himself quit, but he tried to talk Ed out of extended torture whenever feasible. Sometimes it worked, though the situation became darkly comedic if Oswald was simultaneously urging him on.

“Something about Jonathan not wanting her to take needless risks to her career,” Ed muttered. Thistle managed to toss the ring of duct tape over Prometheus’ neck, like he was a prize in an unusually erudite carnival game.

***

Ivy knew one of the best ways to get the truth out of Harley was suddenly ask while giving her a backrub. “So what’d you do to Tetch, huh? Spill.”

“I’m a professiona...mmm…” She tried to look pouty but failed. Ivy knew all her knots.

“C’mon, we keep each other’s secrets.”

“Well, I’ve been trying to get all my charges to be kinder to each other, or at least more...ooh, yes, there...civil...but I might have told one of them that I’d make sure he wasn’t punished for harassment of one specific individual if he didn't seriously hurt him and also left everyone else alone. And didn’t if he tell anyone I said that.”

Ivy laughed. “It's who I think it is, isn’t it? The one with the crush on youuuu.”

Harley buried her face in the pillow. “In my defense, they had a serious falling out after that time they briefly escaped together. Jerome was gonna pick on him anyway.”

***  
Julian didn’t feel safe inviting Penelope Garcia to his wedding, but he sent her a video of the ceremony. She cried for good reasons.

***

_Two-for-joy,_

_I thought I would be less vulnerable to the attack than others would be, but it turned out that my unique qualities actually make me more vulnerable. I won’t be interacting with him one-on-one again and in anything other than tightly controlled conditions. Fortunately, my attacker’s skillset seems to be unique. I’m glad he decided to be petty and vindictive rather than try to make me help him escape._

_(The hardest part was to avoid saying, “Surprise, bitch, thought you’d seen the last of me.”)_

_I know you don’t want any sort of payment. I know you saw it as repaying a debt. I never thought of it like that, but rest assured that we are definitely on equal terms._

_I see your face among the people where I work. It doesn’t make me kinder per se, I’m not like that, but it makes me more responsible. It’ll never be a place of sunshine and rainbows, but it’s not like it was. I’m getting a black feather inked over the scar. It seems you also make me sentimental._

_Thank you._

***

Three months later, Jonathan got a letter-sized envelope with no return address. When he carefully opened it in his lab, wearing safety gear, it was just a photo of a tattoo on someone’s lower torso, right over where a particular type of incision would go. A white feather.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote an urban fantasy that's sometimes dark, other times funny, pretty queer, at times cozy, and significantly weird. Pretty much like I hope you found this fic. I would love if you took a look. [ Available as ebook and print form on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DSLT3D2/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1529183871&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=Donaya+Haymond&dpPl=1&dpID=51cFXjiasBL&ref=plSrch), and in [print from the Barnes & Noble site.](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/seasons-turning-donaya-haymond/1129067787?ean=9780999202654)


End file.
